


Many a Poor Boy

by jane_x80



Category: NCIS, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Meetings, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 10:12:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17896511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_x80/pseuds/jane_x80
Summary: Dean is in Portland, Oregon for a case, working it solo since Mary asked for time alone with Sam to get to know him. Dean has returned to the nomadic lifestyle of his childhood, after leaving the bunker per Mary's request. He meets an intriguing man at a bookstore in Portland, and they have another chance meeting after that. Both men are lonely and alone, and even though Tony is mysterious and doesn't talk about his past, which Dean thinks has something to do with law enforcement or the military, Dean is attracted to him. Although it might be dangerous for a hunter to be with someone like Tony, maybe this is his chance for a new home and a new person to belong to.This is an AU for Supernatural post s11 after Mary is brought back, and AU for NCIS post s13, after Tony's exit from NCIS.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The title of the story comes from the lyrics of [The House of the Rising Sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKdN5aSC4HE) (The Animals).
> 
> This story is part of the [Every Fandom Bang 2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/2019_Every_Fandom_Bang). Thank you to [SpencnerTibbsLuvr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KliqzAngel/pseuds/SpencnerTibbsLuvr) for the gorgeous artwork! I love it, and it captures the feel of the story so well.
> 
> As mentioned in the summary, this is an AU for Supernatural post s11 after Mary is brought back, and AU for NCIS post s13, after Tony's exit from NCIS. After the Prologue, when we get to Dean's POV (which will be maintained throughout the rest of the fic), the story takes place sometime in early spring the year after the end of s11 Supernatural and s13 NCIS (chronologically they coincide).
> 
> This is my first Supernatural crossover! I am a huge fan of Dean Winchester and the idea of Tony and Dean together really floats my boat ;) And maybe one day I'll write a Destiel story (which I admit I am a sucker for Destiel) 😄
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy the story!

**Prologue**

[](https://i.imgur.com/pUmxJDL.jpg)

He’d been working at the bookstore for a couple of months now. He knew that his co-workers watched him and talked about him behind his back, but he ignored it all and focused on learning the new routine of creating displays, scheduling book signings and story times, customer service, and shelving and re-shelving. Lots and lots of shelving and re-shelving. An endless amount of it. He found the newness of it all refreshing and the fact that he didn’t know anybody even more so. He’d needed a new start, and this was it for him.

Of course, he knew that his new co-workers wondered what he’d done prior to this, as obviously he had had very little experience working in a bookstore. But he worked hard, never complained, and kept to himself, always declining the casual invitations to join them for a night out for dinner or drinks, or in any way socialize with his new co-workers. In fact, he did everything he could to actively discourage any kind of relationship and refused to make any new connection with anyone. He didn’t care about them, didn’t want to care about them, and that was the way he wanted to live the rest of his life. It was for the best.

But maybe because he kept to himself, that seemed to pique their curiosity. They seemed to want to know _more_ about him. There were, of course, quite a few of them in their twenties or late teens, given that he was working in a bookstore. He barely even glanced at them, even if they tried to engage him in conversation. He stayed clear of the purple-haired barista in the Starbucks attached to the bookstore, who always seemed to want to flirt and chat and ‘get to know him better’. He was too old for them age-wise, plus he felt so much older than them anyway. After all that had happened to him, he no longer had the energy to try to even fake any kind of enthusiasm when they spoke to him, or even correct any of them should their pop culture references be wrong, something that used to be anathema to him. He certainly couldn’t muster any interest in them in any non-platonic manner, despite the hints some of them were not so subtly dropping. Maybe they had some kind of daddy kink. He didn’t know. Didn’t want to know.

There were those who were older, of course. But equally, he stayed away from the co-workers who were closer to his age – most of them married, or divorced, or a combination of the two, always wanting to know his own status. He wore no rings on his fingers and remained tight-lipped about practically everything about himself. He always volunteered to stay late or even overnight to do inventory or displays, something most people hated, and something he could do alone and without the company of others. So although he was never unfriendly, his co-workers could all see the non-tangible signboards he’d put up – stay away, not interested, and variations thereof. Unfortunately, instead of making them stay away, it intrigued them even further and they continued to try to engage him in ways that he wasn’t prepared to do, which frustrated him to no end. All he wanted to do was go to work every day, and do a good job, and forget about all the things that had led him to this point in his life. He didn’t want to strike up a conversation with someone and talk about his interests, or what he used to do before, or any of that. He wanted to just come to work, do the work, and go home, keeping to himself as much as possible.

Of course, it didn’t help that, despite everything that had happened, he remained a good looking man. Still tall, broad shouldered and slim hipped, his muscles still nicely toned. Age hadn’t softened his belly too much. Not that he was _old_ per se. He just wasn’t in his thirties anymore. But he still kept his body in shape, and despite the fact that he no longer wore his expensive designer suits, his clothes were still of good quality and fit him beautifully, highlighting his toned ass. He still had standards for himself, whatever else. He pretended to be completely oblivious to it, but his supervisors tittered when they gave him the task of hauling boxes of books around as they did this to witness his biceps flexing and bulging as he completed his task. He just did as he was told with a minimum of words and fuss. It also didn’t help that his eyes were expressive green pools, and his facial bone structure classic. His brown hair he kept short but unfussy, usually somewhat messy. Sometimes they wondered if he even combed his hair that day, which somehow added to his allure for some reason. The women whispered about the kissable-ness of his full, shapely lips, the shape of his toned ass, and wondered how his honey gold skin would taste.

They noticed how he always brought a packed lunch, and it always seemed to be something homemade and healthy. Perhaps he had someone at home who made him his daily lunches? But their new co-worker never talked to them about that (or anything else). At lunch, he would sit in the employee lounge, head in a book, quietly eating his lunch. He never joined the other groups eating, never asked to sit with anyone. In fact, if there wasn’t an empty table, he would warm up his food and then eat it alone at the Starbucks attached to the store, sitting alone at a table, reading intently or if the weather was lovely he would sit outside in the parking lot, reading as he ate.

But when he spoke to the customers he was always charming and even slightly flirtatious. He showed an amazing ability to calm even the unhappiest of customers, and with his wide knowledge of books and movies, they always left having purchased more than what they had come into the store for. And once he had dealt with the customer, he reverted back to the quiet, unassuming man who never complained when he had to re-shelve the same books for the umpteenth time that day.

The first time he worked during a Saturday morning story time, after helping to set everything up, he melted into a dark corner and watched as Grace, their most popular story time reader read to a handful of pre-schoolers. His expression was, for a moment, unguarded, and the look of sorrow and loss almost broke the hearts of the few people who caught it. But he wiped it all away, his face assuming an expectant and slightly amused expression, as soon as realized what he was doing. And those who looked at him again, having seen the sorrow and loss believed that they had imagined what they had seen earlier. But they did speak about it amongst themselves, not that he ever paid any attention to the whispers behind his back.

All this made him even more mysterious and intriguing, and they wondered even more about the man. They tried to google him to find out more about him, but he did not even seem to have a facebook page or twitter or Instagram, or any other electronic footprint. One of the part timers working at the store was an IT major in grad school, and a budding hacker, and she and a friend actually found some information about a deleted facebook page and even dug out a few pictures, confirming that it was indeed, their quiet co-worker. But a minute after that happened, both their hard drives were wiped clean and reformatted. Apparently a worm had piggybacked a ride back to them and had systematically erased everything, reformatting their machines back to factory settings.

They whispered that he was perhaps in witness protection. But why would someone in witness protection not have a better background story? Or even a different name? The lack of electronic footprint in and of itself would have been suspicious. So, no, probably not witness protection. The budding hacker mentioned that the photos that she had seen (before her entire machine was wiped clean) had shown that their new co-worker had, at one time, been a ham and an outgoing person, who smiled and made funny faces in the few pictures that they’d managed to see. Nothing like the quiet, unsmiling man that they faced on a daily basis.

But they learned their lesson. No more trying to dig up dirt on their co-worker on their computers. Or they’d lose the contents of their hard drives. Someone was protecting the man’s privacy online, as fiercely as he was protecting himself in person. It wasn’t worth the risk to their computers to try something like this again.

Then one day, about a week before Christmas, a silver-haired man with sharp blue eyes and military bearing swept into the store with a small blonde woman in tow. The woman went to the Customer Service desk but the man stood and surveyed the store with eagle eyes. When the new co-worker emerged from behind a bookshelf, they spotted each other at about the same time.

The quiet man lit up with a smile that could only be described as brilliant. He smiled wide, exposing his perfect teeth. His cheeks creased into attractive dimples, his green eyes lighting up and twinkling happily, laugh lines crinkling his eyes, making him even more beautiful than they’d ever seen him. The blue-eyed man’s lips quirked into a grin and he strode up to the other and engulfed him in a bear hug, eyes closed, face buried in the man’s neck. The small blonde woman bounded over energetically and threw her arms around the man as well in an awkward group hug. The watchers tried not to begin whispering right away when they saw that both newcomers had badges and guns clipped to their belts.

For the first time since he started working there, the quiet man took an early lunch out with his companions and forwent his packed lunch. When they walked him back to work – not a minute late – the blond woman hugged him tightly and he leaned down and kissed her cheek. The silver-haired man pulled him into an embrace, kissing him squarely on his lips, and the watchers saw how their co-worker melted into the man and kissed him back hungrily, mouths open, slanting against each other. His eyes were closed, one hand fisting the silver hair, the other clutching the back of the other man’s shirt. But eventually, he pulled away, his face the picture of grief.

The watchers thought they saw the older man’s mouth form the word “Please”.

The green eyed man shook his head and smiled sadly, jerked his chin at them, and then turned away, walking back into the store without looking back. When his co-workers asked him about his visitors, he grunted noncommittally and just went about his day as usual, revealing nothing, discouraging any further questions.

The memory of the visitors gradually faded from the watchers’ memories, but nobody still knew anything about the quiet man other than he worked in a bookstore, he drank copious amounts of hazelnut coffee, he was very good with customers, he rode a bicycle to and from work regardless of the weather, and he was quiet and kept to himself.

Spring was almost upon them and the green eyed man had gone about, doing his work quietly and efficiently. He worked weekends and holidays without complaint, which made his co-workers very happy. But he never said much to them, and continued to eat his lunches with his nose buried in a book, ignoring the world around him as much as he could.


	2. Chapter 2

[](https://i.imgur.com/pUmxJDL.jpg)

Dean Winchester was about to leave the bookstore, having had a quiet conversation with his contact and discussed the possible case that had brought him to Portland, Oregon. It was a cloudy day, threatening to rain, and he had to go check out the body in the morgue and figure out what the hell was going on in town. But he’d driven all night to get there, and had spent the morning poking around the police station, reading the case files and talking to the cops. The usual stuff. But he hadn’t even stopped for breakfast so right now his stomach was growling pretty angrily and the smells from the Starbucks in the bookstore were mouth-watering.

He debated leaving to find a quiet diner somewhere to grab a bite, but then the skies opened up and rain fell in almost solid sheets of water. Sighing, he turned and entered the café area of the bookstore and got in line. He was pleased to see that amongst the selection of desserts were several good-looking pieces of pie. Dean always had room for pie.

He grabbed his tray which contained a sandwich, a large Americano and a slice of apple pie and looked around. Unfortunately everyone had the same idea when it started raining. Every table was occupied. People were even sharing tables already, given the limited seating.

He looked around and saw a two-person table tucked away almost out of sight, and approached it, hoping it would be unoccupied. But a man sat there, face hidden in a book, eating something from a container, and nursing a large cup of coffee.

Dean looked around one more time and wished that he’d gotten his food to go. He didn’t have a choice now so he walked up to the table and cleared his throat.

The man looked up and Dean lost his train of thought, losing himself in amazingly green eyes. Dean wasn’t usually into green eyed men, he had his own green eyes, thank you very much, so it wasn’t so much the color of the eyes that captivated him, but damn, this man that came with the green eyes was beautiful. Short brown hair, those expressive green eyes, amazing bone structure, and full, shapely, cocksucking lips. A slight frown creased his brow, as the man gave him a questioning look.

“Yes?” the man’s voice was a husky tenor. A very attractive husky tenor.

Pull yourself together, Winchester, Dean told himself. It wasn’t like he’d never seen a beautiful man before. And this man wasn’t even young – he had at least five years, maybe more, on Dean. But he definitely wore his years well.

“You mind if I sit?” Dean nodded to the open chair. “Kind of crowded today.”

The man gave a quick look around the cafeteria and Dean realized that his seat gave him a good view of the whole cafeteria while hiding himself from view. There were also bookshelves behind him so it was unlikely that someone would be able to sneak up on the man from behind. The man had chosen a strategic seat. And the way that the man had looked around was practiced. He took in everything quickly, sized the situation up and made the decision.

“Go ahead,” he said, giving Dean the trace of smile before he ducked back behind his book.

Dean put his tray down and sat. Silently he began eating. He took in the other man’s appearance, noting the button down shirt and khakis. Dean could tell that both were designer labels and probably cost more than what Dean spent on motels in a month. But strangely, he also had a name tag pinned to his shirt. ‘Tony’, it read. So he worked here.

Interesting. Why was a hot dude wearing designer clothes working in a bookstore for – what Dean would assume – very little pay?

“See something you like?” the voice made Dean jump.

He saw that those gorgeous green eyes were fixed on him, one eyebrow raised, lips quirking up in a mocking grin.

“Sorry,” Dean apologized, blushing profusely at being caught staring.

The man shrugged. “Since you know my name now,” he looked down pointedly at his name tag, “maybe you can tell me yours so we’re on even footing?”

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Dean was flustered. “I’m Dean.”

“Tony,” the man nodded flicking his eyes to his nametag again, his eyes laughing at Dean, albeit not unkindly.

“You work here, I guess?” Dean asked, just in case. The expensive clothes had thrown him, for some reason.

“What gave me away?” the voice was gently mocking again, making Dean blush even brighter.

“Sorry,” Dean muttered, tearing his eyes away from the man’s face.

The man gave him an impish grin, cheeks creasing into attractive dimples. “No, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to give you a hard time.”

“Sorry for the, uh, staring.”

The man brushed it away. “Eat your lunch,” he told Dean, turning back to his book, which Dean was excited to see was _Slaughterhouse-Five_. Dean had a thing for Vonnegut and he especially had a thing for the hot guys who read Vonnegut.

Dean finished his sandwich, scrupulously trying to keep his eyes off of the attractive man. Although even if he was staring at him, only this man would know. It wouldn’t be like Dean was outing himself drooling over a guy in front of people he knew. Like Sam, his brother, for instance. Sometimes it was kind of nice to be on his own, without Sam hounding his every step, scrutinizing his every interaction. Dean kept his interest in men as quiet as he could. The hunter community wasn’t as open minded as he would like. Lord knew, his own father would have probably been first in line to kick his ass if he’d known that Dean liked to take it up the ass every so often. So without Sam hanging around him, he was able to enjoy the company of the occasional gentleman without stress, and without lies. Not that he thought Sam would have issues with Dean being bisexual, but for some reason the idea of seeing the sympathetic understanding and patience in Sam’s eyes made Dean cringe. Better to keep it quiet the way he had done all his life.

Besides, if Sam got a hair up his butt about things, before Dean knew it Sam would’ve served him up as the poster boy for bisexual hunters. Look at badass hunter Dean Winchester, Sam would say. He likes men just as much as women and he’s the Righteous Man, the Michael Sword, and stopper of the Apocalypse. Apocalyp _ses_ , plural. Apocali? Whatever the plural was for apocalypse. Although why anyone other than the Winchesters would need a word to cover multiple apocalypses, would be an interesting question. But Dean digressed. As to being the poster boy for badass bisexual hunters, yeah, no. No, thank you. It was much better for everyone if Dean continued to keep this part of his extracurricular activities to himself.

But it was odd that Dean would be so attracted to this particular guy, no matter the hotness. Generally, Dean tended to lean towards men younger than himself. Not twinks per se, but men in their late twenties, early thirties. Men who looked like they might be good with their hands, not men who sat in offices all day long and faced a computer. This man, Tony, was easily in his mid to late forties, and while he didn’t have the typical soft body of a geek, he worked in a bookstore. The last guy Dean had allowed to fuck him had been a husky carpenter. He’d reminded Dean of a young Harrison Ford. This guy though, despite working in a bookstore, he was still lean and had an athletic build. The man took care of himself, and given the way he’d cased the café with a practiced eye, Dean had no doubt that Tony knew how to handle himself. Ex-military, perhaps? But yet here he was working in a bookstore and still keeping a watchful eye on the premises. Maybe he was undercover or something? And normally, that didn’t interest Dean. Any whiff of law enforcement, especially, and Dean was out of there, given his sketchy background. But this man had a quiet strength that shone so brightly that he couldn’t help but be pulled towards it, and when Dean looked into his eyes, there was a bleak sadness and a deep hurt that Dean wanted to be the one to soothe away.

And Dean was _not_ the kind of guy to soothe anyone. He liked the sex to be fun, dirty, and most importantly, casual. Dean was not into commitment and soothing someone seemed to imply that there would be feelings involved, and caring, and maybe even commitment. And definitely there would be talking. Normally Dean would not be in the least bit interested, hell he should probably be running away screaming right now. But fuck it, this man was so goddamned beautiful it was hard to believe he was even real. And more importantly, whatever it was that made him shine so brightly from within was something Dean couldn’t really resist.

“Dean?” the voice shook Dean from his thoughts.

“Huh?”

“You’re staring again,” Tony’s grin was amused.

“Sorry,” Dean muttered, turning his eyes down. He’d somehow eaten his sandwich. It was time for the pie. No guy was hot enough to distract him from enjoying his pie. He picked up his fork, stabbed the pie and moaned appreciatively when he took the first bite.

“Good pie?” Tony asked.

Dean nodded, mouth full, keeping silent, for once not wanting to be rude. He kept eating, making appreciative noises.

“I take it you like pie?” Tony was grinning now.

Dean nodded. “Nothing better than good pie,” he mumbled around a mouthful of pie, one hand in front of his mouth to minimize the rudeness. What? Dean knew what was acceptable and what wasn’t. Just because he usually didn’t give a shit about manners and propriety didn’t mean he was completely uncouth and couldn’t be good mannered if he wanted to be. Especially when he was eating pie in front of fuckable strangers.

“Apple pie in particular?”

“Any pie,” Dean grinned. “Ain’t picky. Pie is pie and good pie deserves to be appreciated.”

“If you like pie, then you should try this place,” Tony said. He pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket, scribbled something on a napkin, and slipped it over to Dean. “Couple blocks from here, little diner with the best homemade pie in Portland.”

“Yeah?” Dean grinned as he took the napkin. He was strangely disappointed that Tony had not included his number. Guy was probably straight, he thought.

“I like pie too,” Tony told him seriously. “Their blueberry pie is to die for. Take my word for it.”

Dean’s grin widened. “Thanks.”

Tony put his book down and set it aside, a clear sign that they were going to talk now, which made Dean sit up straighter in his chair. “Tell me Dean,” he said, “what brings you to Portland?”

Dean gave him a look. “How’d you know I don’t live here?”

Tony looked him up and down, making Dean feel self conscious. He’d worn his usual clothes – plaid shirt over an old, worn, dark Henley, ripped black jeans, boots, and an old leather jacket. He wasn’t sure how what he was wearing wasn’t pretty ubiquitous in any city in the country.

“The shoes, mainly,” Tony shrugged.

Dean looked down at his steel-toed work boots. Good for kicking doors down, sure. But people wore steel-toed boots everywhere in this country. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Not very rain appropriate,” Tony said. “More wintery, I’d say, rather than rainy. And more steel toed and work boots oriented than rain appropriate. I’d guess that you probably live somewhere colder and dryer than here.”

Dean nodded. Tony was good. “Yeah, I’m here for work.”

And Tony grinned and sipped his coffee, not asking the obvious next question of what it was Dean did for work. Dean raised an eyebrow at the conspicuous lack of the follow up question.

Tony made a face, understanding the unasked question. “I like a man with a little bit of mystery,” his lips quirked up as did one eyebrow.

Wait. Hold on just a second. Was Tony flirting with him? Dean wasn’t sure, but he felt himself blushing again. Clearing his throat, he tore his eyes away from Tony’s smirk and looked down at his shoes instead. Loafers of some sort. Also some kind of very expensive designer brand, although they looked comfortable and appropriate for someone who would be on their feet all day. But not something that would do well in the rain.

“Your shoes don’t look rain appropriate either,” he said accusingly.

“I work here,” Tony countered. “I have other shoes in my locker for going outside. They’re waterproof.”

Dean grinned at him and nodded.

“Anyway, my lunch break is over. Back to the salt mines.” Tony tapped his book, put his lunch container into a small insulated bag and pushed his chair back.

“I don’t know, I find salt mines oddly comforting,” Dean was honest. Being surrounded by salt, being in tunnels or caves made entirely out of salt sounded like the safest place for someone in his profession.

Tony gave him a strange look but decided not to comment. “Nice to meet you, Dean,” Tony stood giving him a smile. “Have a good day.”

“Uh, likewise,” Dean stuttered. Fuck, the man’s smile was blinding. And then he was gone, presumably back to work. Dean tried not to look as if he was looking around for Tony when he left the store, but he totally was. He caught sight of Tony talking to a woman in the Mystery aisle. Tony gave him a friendly nod and a wave, and he returned the wave self-consciously before he practically ran out of the store, aiming to leave before he embarrassed himself even more in front of the hot guy.

He settled in Baby, breathing in the comforting familiar scent of leather and patted the dashboard. Baby always calmed him. He sighed. Time to get to work. And if he could get this case buttoned up in the next twenty-four hours, maybe he’d reward himself with good homemade pie at the place that Tony’d recommended. Or maybe he might head there for dinner, regardless of the status of the case. Either way, he went back to his motel and changed into his FBI suit and shoes. Time to get back to work.


	3. Chapter 3

[](https://i.imgur.com/pUmxJDL.jpg)

It was still raining steadily when Dean left the morgue. The sky was darkening quickly, and Dean had had a frustrating afternoon. There were clues on the bodies but sometimes, without having a partner to distract the Medical Examiner, it was harder for him to do what he needed to do to get confirmation of what was going on.

So far, everything pointed to a ghost. Some kind of vengeful spirit. He still had yet to determine who the ghost was or how the victims were chosen. Some of it seemed random – wrong place wrong time sort of thing. A few seemed to be connected. He had copies of the case files and the ME reports in the back seat for him to review in his room that night. He loosened his tie and threw it in the back seat on top of the folders.

He was debating going to look for that diner Tony had recommended – don’t think of Tony, he told himself. Don’t think of those green eyes, or the dimples in his cheeks which had magically appeared when he smiled at him. Especially don’t think of those fucking lips of his. And too late. Now he was thinking of him. He sighed to himself. He’d been a little distracted that afternoon while trying to work the case. He kept playing back the stupid ways he’d been caught staring at Tony, sharing his table at lunch. But, in his defense, Tony was hot. Hot enough that even Charlie would have been staring at him, and she most definitely did not swing that way.

Either way, Dean had to get his mind off hot men and back on his case. And maybe get his hands on some good blueberry pie. But he was pretty exhausted. He’d not slept the previous night, driving the twenty plus hours from Kansas to Portland almost straight through. Maybe he should just go back to the motel, order pizza and crash.

Deciding pizza and sleep were more important than pie and ignoring the little voice screaming ‘Sacrilege! Nothing is more important than pie!’ in his head, Dean headed back towards the motel. As he was driving, he realized that the car in front of him was weaving. He slowed down, distancing Baby from it. Was the driver on the phone, or impaired? Oncoming traffic was honking at the car as it occasionally slipped into the wrong lane, and lurched back into the right lane.

The driver was probably drunk, Dean thought. He eased off the accelerator even more, deciding that Baby shouldn’t get too close to the asshole. And then the car braked hard prompting Dean to do the same, and Dean saw that it had swerved into the bike lane. Then the car’s reverse lights came on, and it hurriedly backed up some, before it went around what looked to be a bicyclist sprawled on the road.

Dean growled under his breath. Fuck it. Fucking drunk driver had run over some poor cyclist. And this was exactly why Dean believed in driving everywhere. Fuck the environment when stupid ass Prius drivers could run over innocent health-conscious cyclists and seriously injure them. Hell, Dean didn’t even like motorcycles. Give him a car any time.

He stopped his car, blocking the cyclist from being run over again by random, careless drivers behind him, put on his hazard lights, and slipped out of the car.

“Hey!” he yelled, seeing the guy slowly start to pick himself up. “You OK?” he ran up to him and helped him up.

“I’m fine,” came a familiar voice.

Dean did a double take. Green eyes, under a bright orange helmet.

“Tony?” he gasped. “Dude, are you OK?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” Tony started limping to the side of the road. “Hey, Dean. Fancy meeting you here. D’you come here often?”

Dean found himself blushing again. Tony had remembered his name and was flirting with him. Or something. He steered the limping man to his car and helped him into the passenger seat, out of the rain.

“’M just gonna bleed all over your car,” Tony murmured.

“Thought you said you were fine?”

“Nothing’s broken. Nothing I won’t recover from.”

Dean knelt and unbuckled Tony’s helmet and with practiced fingers felt Tony’s head for injuries. No injuries that he could discern. He held up a finger in front of Tony’s eyes. “Follow my finger,” he told the man, and moved it from side to side and up and down. Tony’s eyes followed him with no difficulty. Dean pulled a small flashlight out of his coat pocket and shone it in Tony’s eyes.

“Fuck!” Tony hissed, pushing Dean’s hand away and scrunching his eyes closed.

“Let me make sure you don’t have a concussion,” Dean insisted.

“I’m fine. No concussion. Believe me, I’d know,” Tony whined.

Dean cupped Tony’s face firmly, shone the light in Tony’s eyes, and nodded. “OK. No concussion. But you’ve got some serious road rash.” He gently took Tony’s hand, turning it so he could see the extent of the damage.

Tony glared at his arms and his shins. His khakis were torn up as were his shin and one of his knees “Fuck,” he swore softly. And then Dean heard him swear in another language under his breath. Was that Italian? And good fucking lord, it just made little Dean perk up and twitch in interest.

He had to get out of the car before he spontaneously combusted due to excessive blushing. “Wait here,” he told Tony.

Dean pulled Tony’s bike up and saw that the front wheel was bent, and there might be other damage to it. It was hard to tell in the headlights and the rain. He shouldered the backpack that had been dropped. Hell, the backpack was heavy. He threw the backpack in the back seat and opened the trunk. He pulled the first aid kit and a sturdy cord out, slammed the trunk shut and carefully strapped the bike to Baby’s trunk, ensuring that Baby wouldn’t get scratched up and the bike wouldn’t be further damaged. Then he got back in the car and drove a block or so until he found a parking space.

He turned the interior light on in the car and took Tony’s hand, looking clinically at the scrapes on his forearm. He grabbed the first aid kit and pulled it open.

“Gonna need better light to make sure we get all the little road crap out of your scrapes so they don’t get infected,” Dean told him, sticking the flashlight in his mouth and freeing both his hands before pulling disinfectant out of the first aid kit.

“Dean, why do you have such a huge first aid kit in your trunk?” Tony asked.

“I like to be prepared,” Dean said, the words garbled by the flashlight in his mouth. “You should call the cops and report that guy before he causes a major accident. I think he was drunk.”

Tony sighed. “I really don’t want the cops involved.”

Dean took the flashlight out of his mouth. “Yeah, well, nobody does. But nobody wants that drunk driver to do something worse than hitting you riding in the bike lane. You might get to walk away from this but someone else might not.” As much as he wanted to go after the car and just beat the crap out of him, this was maybe one of those times when letting the cops do their job might work better. Boy, he really must be getting old to even have these kinds of thoughts, he mentally rolled his eyes at himself. He put the flashlight back in his mouth and continued dabbing at Tony’s legs.

Tony sighed. “Fine. But leave my arms for now. I don’t want to get your car even more messed up.”

Dean gave him a look.

“It’s an Impala, right? What year? ‘67? ‘68?”

“’67,” Dean pulled the flashlight out of his mouth again and smiled.

Tony nodded and looked at Baby with real interest. “You’ve really done an awesome job keeping your car in pristine condition.”

“Thanks,” Dean preened a little. Finally! A guy who appreciated Baby! And a hot guy at that. “I’ve done most of the maintenance work myself,” he muttered, blushing again. He didn’t know what it was about Tony that kept making him blush.

“Well, she’s gorgeous, and I don’t want to bleed all over her,” Tony made a move for the door.

“You’re not riding home like that,” Dean glared at him. “Besides your bike needs some repairs. Let me at least drive you home.”

“I live like five blocks away,” Tony said, sounding tired. “I can walk that no problem.”

“Shut up. I’ll drive you home, patch you up, and you can do whatever you like after that. But I think you should call the cops on that guy.”

Tony sighed. “Fine,” he said. “No cops. But I’ll sic someone on them.”

“Awesome,” Dean smiled at him.

He gave Dean his address, which really was only a few blocks away, then pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. Dean nodded to him, encouraging him to make his call. Tony sighed and swiped his phone, tapping at it before he held it up to his ear.

“Abs?” he spoke, his tone tentative.

Dean could hear the loud squealing on the other end of the phone and he grinned. Whoever Tony was calling totally reminded him of Charlie, which made his heart lurch. God, he missed Charlie. So much. He’d never stop blaming himself for what happened to her.

“Abs. Abby. Calm down. Deep breaths. That’s the way. Good. I need a favor. Yeah. Call Portland PD and let them know there’s a drunk driver. No, I don’t want to call them. Come on… Please? Yeah. He’s already run over a cyclist. Hit and run, yeah.” Tony rolled his eyes at Dean. “I know. No he’s fine. How do I know? You’re talking to him. He ran me over.” Tony held the phone away from his ear and Dean heard the shriek. “Abby! Abs. Let Portland PD know.” Tony rattled off the make and model of the car, the license plate, described a dented quarter panel and the car’s last heading without batting an eyelid. If Dean had had any doubt that Tony probably had some kind of law enforcement or military background, this definitely solidified it. Dean was leaning towards former law enforcement officer of some sort now. “Thanks Abs. No. Abs. I’m fine. No. Really. I’m fine. A-a friend’s driving me home right now.”

He listened for a moment before he sighed, rolled his eyes, and handed Dean the phone after putting it on speaker. “She wants to talk to you.”

Gingerly Dean took the phone. “Yeah?”

A husky female voice started talking to him, not even greeting him. “You make sure Tony really is OK, OK? He always says he’s fine and we all know if he says he’s fine it really means the opposite. Is he concussed?”

“He’s not concussed.”

“How do you know that?”

“I checked.”

“Good. Give me a sitrep of his condition,” she ordered curtly.

“Road rash on both his forearms and one shin. Scraped knees. Maybe a twisted ankle,” without even thinking about it, Dean obeyed her.

“That’s it?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Check his ribs.”

“What?”

“He won’t tell you what hurts so you have to check him. Check his ribs. If you can listen to his breathing, you do that too. Anything sounds like a rattle, take him to the hospital and don’t take no for an answer.”

“Um…”

“You got me?”

“Um, yeah?”

Tony had his hand over his eyes. “Abs!” he yelled. “That’s enough.”

“You take care of him, Mister. We’re not there to do that,” the woman said, her words coming faster now. “Please?”

“Yeah. OK.”

“Thank you. Give me back to Tony. Don’t drive and talk on a cell phone. It’s dangerous and it’s against the law.”

“OK.” Dean handed the phone back to Tony who gave him an apologetic look.

He started driving to Tony’s house and watched as the older man took the phone off speaker and listened to what seemed to be a lengthy lecture from the woman, one hand rubbing his forehead, finally cutting her off when they turned into his driveway.

“I’m home now. Gotta go. Bye Abs,” he hung up the phone and sat breathing silently for a moment. Then he straightened up and pasted on a smile before he turned to Dean. “Sorry again for all that. She’s…”

“Energetic?” Dean supplied. For whatever reason, even though Dean should be jealous that Tony knew some chick who he’d call to sic on a drunk driver, she seemed to bring out that Charlie vibe in Dean. Tony wasn’t in some kind of romantic relationship with the chick. And she did have a lot of energy, just like Charlie did.

Tony chuckled. “Yeah. That’s one word for it.”

“I thought she was supposed to call the cops on the guy who hit you?”

“She did. She told me they’d just stopped him on Washington Ave right when I hung up on her.”

Dean’s eyes widened. “Impressive! She was talking to you the whole time!”

“She multitasks.”

“I’ll say.”

Tony stretched his arm to the back seat and winced as his muscles protested.

“Hey, I’ll get it for you,” Dean moved Tony’s arm back gently, and reached back to bring Tony’s backpack up. Tony pulled a garage door opener out of the front pouch and opened his garage door. “Thanks for the ride. If you could help me get my bike in the garage, we can get you on your way and back to your plans for the night.”

“No plans,” the words were out of Dean’s mouth before he could stop them. He blushed when Tony turned curious eyes at him. “Was going to call for pizza and then just go to bed. But now I promised Abby I’d patch you up.”

Tony snorted. “I’m fine.”

“She said you’d say that and not to believe you.”

Tony looked hurt.

Dean grinned. “She’s not wrong, is she?”

Tony sighed and shrugged.

“Unless you have someone waiting for you inside who can take care of you?” Dean wondered if Tony’s house was a huge mess, or if Tony was going to introduce him to his wife and two point five children, or maybe he was going to find that Tony was the neighborhood equivalent of the cat lady.

Tony pouted and shook his head. “Nope. I live alone.”

Right. Alone. _Score_! Dean mentally cheered even as he gave him a look. He’d promised this Abby that he would patch Tony up and for whatever reason, he wanted to take the promise seriously.

“Yeah. Fine. Come in,” Tony sighed.

“You mind if I drive Baby in? I can unstrap your bike and see to your wounds. Then I’ll be on my way.”

Tony gave him a look. “Do I have a choice?”

“If your friend could yell at you and me, _and_ at the same time get the guy who committed a hit and run on you pulled over in the span of what, five minutes? I’m pretty sure she’ll be able to hunt me down and come after me if I don’t carry out her instructions to the letter,” Dean grinned.

Tony rolled his eyes. “Yeah. She’ll track you down,” he agreed. “Fine. Pull in. We shouldn’t leave your beautiful car out in this weather.”

Dean laughed. “Baby can take it,” he shook his head. “But we appreciate the sentiment.” Dean drove Baby into the garage, next to a car covered by a dusty brown tarp.

“Drive a lot?”

Tony grinned and shrugged. “Nowhere to go I can’t get to on my bike,” he made a face. Tony hopped out of the car before Dean could come around to help him out, as the garage door closed behind them. He limped to a door, opened it, turned the garage lights on and jerked his head. “Come on in,” he said, frowning.

Dean looked around the garage – it was organized and neat but didn’t feel like Tony spent a lot of time in it. He lingered for a moment, looking around, then grabbed Tony’s backpack from the back seat and waffled about bringing in his first aid kit. The older man peeked out at him.

“You get lost, Dean?” he asked.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Just trying to decide,” he held up the first aid kit.

“You better save your supplies for a real emergency,” Tony grinned. “I have a kit in here. And you can supervise, if you like. I can take care of a little road rash myself.”

“I’m still scared of Abby,” Dean joked, leaving the first aid kit, but bringing Tony’s heavy backpack with him. “You’d better leave the first aid to me. The fuck do you lug around anyway?” he asked, hefting it up and down, trying to gauge what it might contain. “Feels as heavy as Sammy’s used to be when he was in school.”

Tony blushed, and Dean had to say that he thoroughly enjoyed seeing the man’s honey gold skin flush red. It was about time Tony ended up blushing instead of him.

“I have books in there,” Tony reached out to grab his pack, but Dean held it away, grinning at him. Tony had maybe an inch on him, but Dean was used to keeping things away from Sammy’s sasquatch reach, so it wasn’t hard to keep it away from Tony. “I work in a fucking bookstore. What else you think I’d be carrying around?”

Dean grinned. “Get in there and take your shirt off so I can see to your arms.”

“That is by far the least sexy way anyone’s ever propositioned me,” Tony griped, limping in after glaring at Dean. “At least buy me dinner first before you ask me to take my clothes off.”

“Dude, you’d _know_ if I was propositioning you,” Dean teased back.

“Is that so?” Tony grinned at him.

“Oh, I promise you, you’d know,” Dean’s voice came out deep and husky.

Tony’s eyes widened and he shivered, and Dean knew that Tony was affected by his voice. Tony stared at him for a moment before he shook his head. “So who the hell is Sammy?” he grumbled.

Dean’s face shuttered. Sam. His brother. Who he hadn’t seen in months because… Dean didn’t want to think about why he hadn’t seen Sammy in so long.

“Hey, sorry,” Tony was immediately apologetic, seeing Dean’s expression. “Didn’t mean to bring up a touchy subject.”

Dean shrugged it off and gave Tony a small grin. “Nah. He’s my brother. Sam.”

“He OK?” Tony asked carefully.

Dean nodded. “Yeah. The little bitch is fine,” he grinned, his warm tone clashing with his insulting words.

Tony nodded, and Dean saw the question in his eyes but he was careful not to verbalize it.

“It’s complicated,” Dean finished lamely.

“Family usually is,” Tony agreed.

“Where’s your first aid kit?”

“Upstairs, first door on the left and go straight through to the bathroom. Under the sink.”

“Your bedroom, I take it?”

Tony nodded.

Dean pursed his lips and looked at Tony’s still sluggishly bleeding arms. “You should probably shower first, then I’ll disinfect and get all the rest of the crap out?”

Tony sighed and nodded. He limped over to the stairs and Dean scrambled over to offer him a hand. Tony waved him away, rolling his eyes. “I’m fine,” he protested.

“Abby said…”

“I can get up the stairs without help,” the man insisted. “Maybe you can come help tear my clothes off?” he winked.

“Blood play, not my thing,” Dean flirted back. “Maybe after I patch you up you can thank me properly.”

They both shook their heads at the over the top flirting and ended up smiling easily at each other.

“You can watch some TV if you like,” Tony nodded to his amazing set up – huge widescreen TV, and the cabinets around were stuffed with DVDs. “Or read a book or whatever,” across from the TV, behind the comfy looking couch were bookshelves so stuffed with books the shelves were bowed. Tony seemed to have all kinds of things – fiction, non-fiction, biographies, sci-fi, literature, poetry, “I’ll holler when I’m ready for you.”

Dean nodded.

After Tony closed his bedroom door, Dean fiddled around with the clicker and turned the TV on. He flipped through the channels – Tony had all the channels, all of them – and quickly found a John Wayne movie on. He glanced at it – _Rio Bravo_. He smiled and mouthed a few lines of it, then quietly prowled around Tony’s house, not one to sit and wait to be invited to snoop.

Tony had the TV, tons of DVDs and books, and the sweetest stereo set up. Dean spent a few minutes looking over Tony’s CD and vinyl collection – he had a lot of music from all kinds of different genres, and he had a lot of Dean’s favorite albums too. It made Dean smile to see it. But there were no photos anywhere that he could see. Nothing personal like that adorned the room. Dean walked through the house.

In what was supposed to be the dining room, instead of a dining table Tony had a gleaming baby grand. Several guitars were neatly arranged on stands. Was that a banjo hanging on the wall? There was a digital drum kit tucked away in the corner. Dean grinned, approving the room thoroughly. He ran his fingernails idly over the nearest acoustic guitar strings and went through to the kitchen. Tony had a state of the art espresso machine and all of his appliances were brushed stainless steel. High end expensive pots and pans hung from hooks placed around the island. The kitchen, unlike the garage, felt lived in. Like Tony spent time there. Dean wondered if Tony cooked, even though he lived alone. He peeked in the fridge. It was relatively filled. Produce, milk, eggs. Cupboards held the usual dishware and a healthy supply of non-perishables. Strategically placed on the counters were different appliances – a stand mixer that Dean couldn’t help but drool over, a regular coffee maker (for the days when Tony didn’t have time for fancy espresso, duh), a toaster and a toaster oven. A butcher block with expensive looking knives stood smack in the middle of the granite topped island. Dean pulled one out and tested the edge – professionally sharpened knives. Dean nodded in approval. He wandered back to the living room, trying to look around and see everything that he could that would give away more about Tony.

There wasn’t much, really. Nothing truly personal jumped out. Even though the appliances were state of the art, the furniture seemed to be understated. Lots of old wooden furniture. Possibly from estate sales. The walls were not too bright, not too dark. There was nothing on the walls, not even a clock. All Dean could tell about Tony was that he played music, enjoyed reading and watching movies, and he probably cooked. His taste in books, music and movies were wide ranging. His house was gleaming and scrupulously clean – Dean approved greatly. After all the years of grimy motels, once they lived in the bunker, Dean had kept everything as clean as he possibly could, and he hated it when a homeowner didn’t care for their house. Tony’s seemed to be in good shape. Dean could probably fix a few creaky hinges but it did look like Tony (or his landlord) took pretty good care of his house.

He sank down on the couch with a quiet sigh and rubbed his forehead. He didn’t get his four hours of sleep the previous night, and he was starting to lose steam. Hopefully Tony would be done in the shower soon so he could patch the guy up and get back to the motel. He wished that he could use the shortcut – have Castiel swing by and mojo the poor man back to health. But, of course, angels had fallen and lost a lot of their power, and even if Castiel was at full strength, he had to be normal in front of Tony. No mojo-ing allowed. So he leaned back against the couch, and settled in to wait, keeping an eye on the movie and yawning intermittently. He was rubbing his eyes sleepily when Tony padded downstairs. He was dressed in a plain gray t-shirt and a pair of loose drawstring pajama pants, and he was lugging a first aid kit that looked just as well stocked as Dean’s did.

Dean grinned up at him. “And you made fun of me for my kit?”

Tony shrugged. “Seriously, I’m good to do this myself.”

“Shut up and sit down,” Dean took the kit away, and opened it on the coffee table, examining its contents. Tony seemed to be stocked for just about any kind of injury. Dean would definitely be able to work with this. He’d already thrown his jacket over the back of the couch, unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. “Gimme a sec to wash up.”

He found the bathroom and thoroughly washed and dried his hands before heading back. He settled himself on the coffee table across from Tony. He carefully swabbed Tony’s scrapes, tweezed out little bits of road that were still embedded, and disinfected and bandaged Tony’s forearms. He did the same to Tony’s legs. He felt both of Tony’s ankles, one of which was starting to swell, and bound it tightly, and Tony pointed him to the icepacks in the freezer. Then he stood, arms crossed, and pursed his lips, frowning at the older man.

“Abby said to check your ribs and listen to your breathing,” Dean stated.

“My ribs are fine. So’s my breathing. Besides I don’t have a stethoscope. I’m not a doctor.”

Dean grinned. “I’m not going to lie to Abby. If she hunts me down and kills me it’ll be your fault and how will you live with your guilt?”

“Fine,” Tony sighed and raised his arms. “Although I repeat, I don’t usually do this unless someone buys me dinner first.”

Dean laughed as he pulled up Tony’s shirt and with gentle yet thorough fingers, felt around Tony’s ribs, front and back, and although there was a tender spot, nothing seemed to be broken. Then he put his ear to Tony’s back and listened to Tony’s breathing. It seemed fine. He’d carefully kept his touch impersonal and clinical.

“Happy now?” Tony grumbled as he pulled his shirt down.

Dean grinned and quirked an eyebrow. And grinned when Tony turned away, cheeks starting to flush.

“Right,” Dean nodded. “I’m gonna take a look and see if I can fix your bike and then be on my way.”

“Wait,” Tony grabbed his wrist. “No. You can’t. You’re tired. And I heard your belly growling angrily at me. Let me at least feed you tonight. You don’t have to fix my bike.”

Dean gave him a long look. “OK, dinner,” he agreed. “Should I call to get something delivered?”

“We can warm something from my freezer.”

Dean made a face. “TV dinners? No offense, but I’d rather spring for pizza. My treat. Consider it the dinner I owe you for getting your shirt off.”

“No, no. No TV dinners,” Tony chuckled self-consciously. “Just. No. I have homemade stuff that I freeze so I don’t have to cook every night?”

Dean nodded. “All right. What d’you have?”

Dean helped Tony into the kitchen and they looked in the freezer, discussing their options before Tony threw a casserole dish of cannelloni stuffed with meat and cheese in the oven. He heated up a container of homemade marinara sauce on the stove while they waited, and they filled the time with small talk. Conversation flowed easily and the topic ranged from Vonnegut to movies to DUIs to Tony’s skills in the kitchen. Dean didn’t feel a need to hide too much of who he was as a person, letting down his guard around Tony, which made the evening seem even more special. The food Tony made turned out to be excellent – much better than the food at many restaurants. But even though the atmosphere was casual and even intimate, throughout the evening, neither man brought up anything truly personal and seemed happy to skirt that subject altogether, which worked really well for Dean, in all honesty. Trying to talk about hunting to someone not in the know was always awkward so Dean was happy to skip any and all talk about family, work, and things like that.

Still, they talked until late into the night, and when Dean was yawning and rubbing his eyes after they ate, Tony offered him the guest room and it felt natural for Dean to accept.


	4. Chapter 4

[](https://i.imgur.com/pUmxJDL.jpg)

Dean awakened suddenly in an unfamiliar bed. It was comfortable and didn’t smell like a motel, so he lay motionless, and tried to keep his breathing unchanged, in case he was being observed. In his experience, it was always better to be wary than to assume everything was fine. He was on his belly, one arm tucked under the fluffy and sweet smelling down filled pillow, his hand on his ivory handled Colt .45 that was in its usual place under his pillow. After a moment of intense listening, he determined that he was alone in the room, and despite his earlier confusion he knew where he was now. He was in Tony’s guest bedroom, getting a good night’s sleep in his very comfortable guest bed. Dean felt refreshed as he stretched luxuriously. Tony was definitely a classy guy because even the bed in his guest bedroom had a memory foam mattress. Not just a memory foam mattress topper. The man had splurged on a proper memory foam mattress for his friggin’ guests. Seriously. Dean couldn’t find any fault with the man at all.

Dean checked the room quickly, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Then he glanced at his phone and saw that he’d slept six hours straight with no nightmares or interruptions. It was the first time he’d gotten so much good sleep in one go since he left the bunker without Sam. The most he’d been able to sleep a night had been only the minimum four, and always broken up and not in a row. Whatever was in Tony’s cannelloni dish last night must have been magic to help him sleep so well. Or maybe it was the company? Or perhaps it was the memory foam mattress. Dean didn’t know. All he knew was that he was awake, couldn’t remember any nightmares, and was feeling pretty good. He slid out of bed, padded to the door and listened for a moment before he opened the door.

The house was still dark. They had gone to bed relatively early so it was only just gone 5 AM. Dean used the restroom and debated quietly leaving and going back to his motel, which was what he would have normally done. But it wasn’t like Tony was a one night stand. All they had done was hang out and eat dinner. There hadn’t even been any handholding, so there was no need for Dean to sneak away. Even so, Dean would normally have taken off, except he kind of didn’t want to this morning. He wanted to make sure that Tony would be none the worse for wear after being run over by a drunk driver the night before.

So Dean looked at himself in the mirror – he was wearing one of Tony’s t-shirts with stylized greek letters Alpha, Chi and Delta on it, and striped pajama bottoms, also Tony’s. The t-shirt fit pretty well, as did the pants, which wasn’t really surprising. Tony and Dean were of a similar height and build. But wearing Tony’s clothes felt so intimate and Dean kept looking at himself in the mirror, fingering the letters on his chest, and smiling. Scoffing at his own sappiness, he left the bathroom and headed downstairs, treading carefully in the dark. He padded into the kitchen and flipped the light switch.

Should he make coffee? Would that be presumptuous? He needed coffee though. He stared at the behemoth of a cappuccino machine and decided there was no way he was tackling that thing but the regular coffeemaker he could deal with. He looked in the cabinet above the coffee machines and found coffee mugs. Remembering the tour of the freezer from the previous night, he recalled that Tony kept his coffee in the freezer.

Dean opened the freezer and looked. Tony had an impressive array of coffee beans, and some well marked containers of already ground beans. He chose a simple dark roast and started the coffee. It was very early and he could spend some time doing his case research. Tony had given him the wifi password the previous evening. Decision made, he went to the garage to dig out his case notes and saw that Tony’s damaged bicycle was still strapped to Baby. Dean decided that he would go over the case, do some research, drink some coffee and then come back into the garage and fix Tony’s bicycle. How else was the man going to get to work if he didn’t?

Plan set, he settled himself at the kitchen table, laptop open, papers spread out. He refilled his coffee and after about an hour he had figured out a plan of attack. He was pretty sure he knew who the spirit was now. All he would need to do now was find out exactly where the body had been buried, and do a salt and burn, something that he couldn’t do until that night. He would spend the day continuing the investigation to ensure that he wasn’t missing anything, but it did seem simple enough.

His phone buzzed and he saw that he had a text from Sam. He texted back to ensure that his brother knew that he was still alive and kicking. Sam worried about him, he knew, and their relationship was strained now because Dean couldn’t come home and wouldn’t tell Sam why he couldn’t come home, so Sam alternated between being angry and disappointed with him, and being worried about him. It was too bad, but right now it was out of Dean’s hands, and if there was one thing that had ever been drummed into him, it was to put Sammy first. Mary had said that she needed time alone with Sammy, and that was what he was giving her. And giving Sam. He’d been a baby when Mary died, he didn’t have the kind of memories that Dean had had about their mother. He deserved time with Mary, so Dean was staying away to give him that.

He had done what he could for the case for now. He closed his laptop, swept the papers back in the folder and stacked them under the laptop before he headed out to the garage. He pushed earbuds into his ears, and bopped along to the classic rock playlist that Sammy had made him before he left, allowing the guitar riff of AC/DC’s TNT to soothe him. God, but he missed Sammy. He set to work fixing Tony’s bike.

A hand on his shoulder made Dean jump, brandishing the screwdriver threateningly.

“Easy, tiger,” Tony mouthed as he stepped back, hands up.

Dean stared at the man, watching as his mouth moved some more, transfixed by those eyes and the lips that were moving. He had no idea what the man was saying. He saw that Tony was dressed like he was, pajama bottoms and an old t-shirt with NCIS in faded letters on it. When Tony’s lips stopped moving, he replied, as articulately as he could, given that he’d heard nothing of the words that had come out of Tony’s mouth. “What?”

Tony laughed and pointed to his ears.

“Oh!” Dean blushed, pulling his earbuds out. He’d been blasting his music. “Sorry, I totally forgot I had those in.”

“Why are you fixing my bike? I thought I told you I’d get it done?” Tony asked, grinning at the blushing man.

“Didn’t want to leave you stranded,” Dean shrugged. “Besides, I didn’t fix your bike. Did what I could – fixed the chain and a couple other things, but you’re gonna need a new front wheel. It’s completely bent out of shape. I could hammer it back into shape if you had the right equipment, but it would probably be safest for you to just get a new one. I don’t know that you’d want to trust riding around on this without a new wheel given that you actually race on this thing?” Dean pointed to the medals Tony had hanging on the wall under his bike rack.

Tony shook his head. “Well, thank you. I appreciate you fixing what you can,” he smiled.

“How’re you feeling this morning?” Dean nodded at his legs.

“I’m fine,” Tony told him, ignoring the skeptical look Dean gave him. “Did you bring your own toolbox?” he pointed to Dean’s monster sized toolbox.

“Sorry, I snooped around in here and didn’t really find any tools to fix your bike so I got mine out of Baby.”

“You look like you know your way around tools? Do you usually bring around a full toolbox in your car?”

“I spend a lot of time driving around and sometimes it’s easier to just be able to fix Baby myself than have to find someplace that would be able to take proper care of her.”

“It’s hard to find a mechanic you’d trust with classic cars,” Tony agreed. “So I guess you must be good with your hands?”

Dean found himself blushing, even though there had been no innuendo in Tony’s words. “I do OK.”

“I made breakfast, if you wanted to… uh, you know, have breakfast. With me,” Tony finished hesitantly.

“Sounds good,” Dean grinned. “I’ll just put my tools away and wash up?”

Tony nodded and headed back into the house. Dean watched as he walked, carefully putting weight on the injured ankle. It wasn’t a limp, exactly, but that was probably because he knew Dean was watching him. Dean had seen through enough of Sam’s shenanigans to know when someone was trying to hide an injury. Dean picked his tools up and put his toolbox away, before he walked back into the house. He went to the downstairs bathroom and thoroughly washed his hands. It was one of those things that Lisa had not enjoyed, oil stains that came with messing around with engines and mechanical things. He found that Tony was serving breakfast at the kitchen table. His laptop and folders had been placed on the sideboard. Tony refused his offer to help and gestured for him to sit.

Dean sat and waited for Tony before he helped himself to the blueberry pancakes and bacon. Tony had even warmed up the syrup for them. Dean was totally salivating while he waited for Tony to take a seat. When he took his first bite, he couldn’t help but moan around the mouthful. “Fuck, dude. These are awesome,” he said around a mouthful of food.

Tony grinned as he stuffed a huge mouthful into his mouth. “Thanks,” he muttered when he’d swallowed. “It’s nice to have someone to cook for.”

“I know what you mean,” Dean agreed, immediately missing Sammy and the bunker. The bunker had been his first real home since their house had burned down when he was four, and he’d loved being able to cook in that kitchen, and keeping it as spotless as he could. He took pride in how clean he kept everything.

“You have a family waiting for you somewhere?” Tony asked.

Dean shrugged. “My brother,” he mumbled. “We lived and worked together for a long time.”

“And you don’t anymore?” Tony wasn’t prodding. He sounded genuinely curious.

“Eh. I still see him for work purposes once in a while, work with him at times,” only if it couldn’t be avoided, Dean was really trying to give Mary what she wanted, “But I don’t live at home anymore. Back to being a nomad. No big deal.”

Tony gave him a thoughtful look but didn’t pry. The rest of the breakfast went by pleasantly. After breakfast, Dean insisted on taking another look at Tony’s arm and legs, and saw that they looked to be starting to heal. His ankle was still swollen, and so Dean insisted on driving Tony to work when Tony said that he was going to walk.

“You’ve done way too much for me,” Tony told him.

“You fed me two meals. I can drop you off at work. In fact, d’you have a regular place you take your bike to? I can pick up the new wheel there and fix up your bike after work tonight?” Dean asked, before he realized that he’d invited himself back to Tony’s that evening.

“I can’t ask you to do that!” Tony objected.

“You didn’t ask. I’m offering.”

Tony sighed. “Well…”

“Right. So give me the address of the bike shop, and let me know what time you get off work and we have a plan?”

“You’ll let me cook you dinner tonight?”

“That’s not necessary. I can just drop you off and…”

“No. I’ll make dinner. Yes?” Tony’s green eyes bore in him.

Dean could only nod and agree. Dean showered and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt that he had stuffed in Baby, and then drove Tony to the bookstore. He stopped outside and gave Tony an awkward smile.

“Thanks for the ride,” Tony told him, grinning.

“See you at five?”

“Can’t wait,” Tony winked, making Dean blush again. Tony stared at him for a long minute, and Dean had the feeling that the older man wanted to lean over and kiss him. But then he put a hand on the door handle and cracked the door open, keeping his eyes on Dean. “Fuck, you’re fucking adorable, Dean. I’ll see you later.”

And then he was out of the car and disappeared into the bookstore without a backwards look. Dean sighed and got his day started.

That afternoon, Dean was anxiously trying to get to the bookstore on time, but there was traffic and he couldn’t very well just drive on the sidewalk, so he was a little late. He was worried that if Tony walked out of the bookstore and the big black Impala was nowhere to be seen, that Tony would assume that he’d forgotten or was a no show. But luckily, he saw Dean waiting by the bookstore entrance as he drove up, and the growl of Baby’s engine made him look up. He jumped in, grinning at the younger man, and leaned over and pressed his lips gently to his freckled cheek. His eyes crinkled as he smiled at the blushing younger man.

“Yup. You’re definitely adorable,” he declared.

“No I’m not. Shut up,” Dean objected, his cheeks flaming, and he started the drive back to Tony’s house. Dean was inordinately pleased at the kiss.

Tony glanced coyly at him and grinned as he looked out the window and stayed silent. When they got to his house, he opened the garage door and with an easy familiarity, Dean drove Baby in. While Tony got busy in the kitchen, Dean worked on replacing the front wheel on Tony’s bike and a couple other tune ups. When he was done, he washed up again in the downstairs bathroom before he walked into the kitchen, perched on a stool at his breakfast counter and watched as the older man moved around the kitchen.

“Can I help?” he offered.

“Almost done,” Tony said. “You can help me next time. You any good in a kitchen?”

“I do OK,” Dean told him, heart stuttering over the easy way Tony had said ‘next time’, as if there would be a next time. He would definitely not have any objections to there being a next time.

Tony’s face lit up in a smile that took Dean’s breath away. “We have a bit of a wait until the chicken is roasted. You want to watch TV while we wait?”

“Sure.”

They grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge and settled on the couch. After channel surfing and flipping around, they settled on a rerun of _Doctor Sexy_.

“I can’t believe you watch this drivel,” Tony teased him.

“It’s awesome!” Dean insisted. “’Doctor. Doc _tor_. _Doc_ tor.’ And the cowboy boots? I mean, what’s not to like?”

“Fucking adorable,” Tony shook his head, grinning delightedly.

“Am not,” Dean grumbled. “We can watch something else if you want to.”

“I kind of like this episode where he and Doctor Piccolo yell at each other in front of the sleep apnea patient and then have sex in the janitor’s closet.”

Dean snapped his head to look at Tony and gasped loudly. “You watch this show?” he pointed an accusing finger at the man.

Tony shrugged. “I have a lot of free time now.”

“Fuck! You _do_ watch this show! You _like_ this show!”

“I never said I liked the show!” Tony denied it.

“Ha!” Dean crowed, folding his arms across his chest, as he settled himself more comfortably into Tony’s couch. “Doctor Sexy, for the win.”

“He does rock the cowboy boots,” Tony conceded which made Dean snort with laughter. “Shut up and watch your damn show,” Tony grumbled.

By the time the kitchen timer went off, their thighs were flush against each other and Dean’s head was practically on Tony’s shoulder. Dean tried not to sigh in disappointment when Tony stood to tend to their food, but it turned out to be well worth it. The dinner Tony made made Dean moan with every bite. Succulent herb roasted chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, and a side of Brussel sprouts sautéed in bacon. Even though Dean made a face at the Brussel sprouts, after he ate one, he stopped complaining about it in his head and embraced the sprout. That was the secret to Brussel sprouts. Bacon. Bacon was the secret to everything. Except pie. Although a bacon pie wouldn’t be half bad.

When Tony offered Dean his guest bedroom again for the night though, Dean had to decline.

“Unfortunately I have to work tonight,” Dean said apologetically.

Tony nodded, eyes serious.

“So, uh, I should probably go and you know. Get the work done.” Bodies don’t get dug up on their own. And that was one of the hassles of working alone. It sure took a lot longer to do a simple salt and burn when only one person was digging.

“Right,” Tony nodded.

“Your bike is all fixed, so you know, you can bike to work again. Hopefully your ankle is better,” Dean knew he was babbling, but Tony’s green eyes were fixed on his lips. He licked them and bit his bottom lip, staring at Tony. “Don’t know why anyone would bike anywhere. It’s unsafe.”

“It’s good for the environment,” Tony muttered.

Dean snorted.

“It keeps me fit,” Tony continued.

Dean hummed appreciatively, and licked his lips again. Shit. Was Tony looking at him like he was dessert? He felt himself blush, and his body heated up. Apparently he liked it when Tony looked at him like he was dessert.

“You really have to work tonight?” Tony asked softly.

Dean sighed and lowered his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, his tone reluctant. “Wish I didn’t, but I do. I don’t want to… rush this.” Whatever _this_ was.

Tony pursed his lips, and trailed a finger up Dean’s arm. “OK,” he said softly. “That’s OK,” he leaned forward and god, Dean’s brain froze up when he realized that Tony was leaning forward to kiss him. He felt Tony’s fingers moving up his arm, to his neck, and cupping the back of his head as Tony’s soft lips pressed against his. The kiss was practically chaste, and ended with Tony sucking his bottom lip as he pulled away a little, keeping himself an inch away from Dean’s lips.

“Is that OK?” Tony asked, his voice husky.

Dean nodded, licking his lips. “Very OK,” he mumbled before he pushed forward and kissed Tony, wrapping his arms around him and melting into his body as their tongues dueled and lips parted. The kiss was far from chaste this time around. Tony began kissing down his jawline, and when he sucked on a spot below Dean’s ear, the younger man couldn’t help but moan, his dick hard in his pants. Tony’s hands were on his bare ass, under his jeans and his boxers, kneading him and pulling him hard against him, Tony’s hard cock pressing against Dean’s thigh. Dean opened his legs and when their cocks brushed together, even between two layers of denim, they both moaned.

Dean pulled Tony’s face back up and mashed their mouths together, wanting to taste and lick and suck and nibble as much as he could. He whimpered when Tony pulled away.

“If you have to go, you’d better go now,” Tony told him, his voice husky with desire.

“I hate work,” Dean grumbled in frustration.

“We could meet for breakfast? Will you be done by then?”

Dean nodded. “Yeah. That’d be good.”

“That diner I told you about? Makes a mean chicken and waffle.”

“Would you think less of me if I had pie with breakfast?”

Tony laughed. “You can have whatever you want, Dean,” he grinned. “No judgement.”

After several more kisses, Dean reluctantly left. They’d agreed to meet at the diner at 6 AM. 0600 hours, Tony had said. The man had to have had some kind of military background. Maybe an MP or something. Although the t-shirt was NCIS. John Winchester had been a marine and had served in Vietnam, so Dean was familiar with what NCIS did. If Tony was former NCIS then the man had been in law enforcement, worse, a federal agent, and Dean had no business running around kissing him, driving him to and from work, and meeting him for breakfast. But the man was gorgeous and fascinating, and Dean couldn’t help himself. He wanted to know more about him. Fuck, the man had cooked him dinner, and he watched _Doctor Sexy_. Dean knew he should pull away, but he couldn’t help himself. All through the grave digging and the repeated move of shooting the spirit with rock salt while trying to get the grave dug up, and then finally the salt and burn, he couldn’t help but look forward to the breakfast date with Tony.


	5. Chapter 5

[](https://i.imgur.com/pUmxJDL.jpg)

Dean was running late. Again. The spirit had been a son of a bitch to get rid of, focusing its concentration on trying to kill him at the end there, and digging a grave was dirty work. He didn’t want to just leave the grave wide open afterwards, given how mentally fragile the surviving victims, the spirit’s still living relatives, were. They didn’t need anything else to make them think they were losing their minds. Even though the ghost had reason to be angry, and had killed those who killed him in the first place, but that didn’t help him find peace, and he began terrorizing and killing his remaining family, which was where Dean ended up stepping in. So he took the time to re-bury the grave. He couldn’t make the plot look untouched, but at least the grave was covered and it no longer looked as if the corpse had tried to make a run for it, or as if the grave had been desecrated. Which, technically, it had. But, at least Dean wanted to try to minimize the trauma to the family members.

Anyway, the fact that Dean was working solo did make things take longer, and the extra time to cover up the grave had added to that time, but even though he was running a little late, Dean had also rushed back to the motel to take a quick shower and scrub his skin and hair of dirt and salt and god knew what else. He needed fresh clothes. He didn’t want to show up for a breakfast date looking like he’d just been digging up a grave. And of course, now it was just pouring down rain again, so he finally walked into the diner fifteen minutes late, wet as a drowned rat, and exhaustion was about to set in.

But when he saw Tony sitting in the back of the diner, sitting with his back to the wall, green eyes lighting up when he caught sight of him, Dean couldn’t help but break into a smile and was gratified when Tony’s answering smile practically blinded him with its brightness and wattage. Dean couldn’t help but be struck by just how gorgeous Tony was. He hustled over to the table, nodding a greeting to the waitress, giving her an apologetic look for dripping along as he walked. But he forgot about her when Tony stood, his smile wide and open, and Dean just walked right into him and kissed him right on those smiling lips. Tony wound an arm around him and kissed him right back without hesitation, still smiling, before he pulled away and gestured towards the table.

“Sorry I’m late,” Dean apologized, shrugging out of his wet jacket and trying not to shake himself off like a wet dog.

Tony just brushed it away and sat back down, his eyes tracking Dean’s every move as the younger man hung up his jacket and settled into the booth.

“I would’ve called, but I don’t have your number,” Dean blushed as he realized it sounded like maybe he was using this as an excuse to ask Tony for his phone number without actually asking Tony for the number.

Tony grinned at him, eyes bright with mischief, and he held his hand out. Dean gave him a sheepish grin as he unlocked his phone and passed it to Tony without a word. His thumbs moved quickly as he typed something in and he handed the phone back to Dean when the waitress came to take their order.

“Your usual, Tony?” she asked the older man.

“Yes, please,” Tony gave her a pleasant smile.

Dean gave him an ascertaining look. Apparently Tony came here often enough to be known by name, and to have a ‘usual’. He hoped that it wasn’t too big a deal that he’d kissed Tony as a greeting. He still didn’t know where that came from since he was usually a lot less open with the PDAs.

“Coffee, please,” Dean gave her a brief smile, and noted the name tag that read ‘Melanie’ pinned to her top. “Short stack of pancakes, side of bacon, and eggs over easy.”

“And a slice of the blueberry pie for Dean,” Tony added.

The waitress raised an eyebrow and Dean couldn’t help but blush and nod as Tony grinned at him. He wasn’t going to turn down a slice of pie, no matter the time of day, and no matter how much the incredibly attractive man sitting across from him might rib him for it.

“Don’t worry, honey,” Melanie assured him. “Tony’s ‘usual’ includes a slice of pie. Will that be a la mode?”

Dean nodded sheepishly. So what if it was the ass crack of dawn? There was never a bad time for pie and ice cream.

“Comin’ right out,” she smiled at them both and walked away, still scribbling on her notepad.

“So you have a ‘usual’ order here?” Dean had to ask.

“I like it here. Reminds of a diner I used to go to with… a friend,” Tony shrugged.

Dean wondered about this ‘friend’ that Tony mentioned, and incredibly, a stab of jealousy went through him. Tony’s friend seemed to be more than just a friend. Apparently his thoughts on the matter, his jealousy, if he were to be honest, were reflected on his face because Tony sighed, his shoulders slumping.

“It was complicated,” he said softly. “In the end, I don’t even think we were friends anymore.”

“But you were in a… relationship… with them?” Dean heard himself asking.

Tony nodded.

Dean stared at him. He looked sad and depressed, and so different from the man whose smile lit up the room when he first stepped into the diner. He reached across the table and took Tony’s hand.

“I’m sorry,” Dean kept his tone gentle. “I don’t mean to bring up old hurts.”

Tony ran his free hand through his hair, allowing Dean to hold the other hand. “We were never ‘out’,” he shrugged. “We worked together. We became friends. Then we became more than friends. And then, I don’t know, it became ridiculous and complicated and then we weren’t even friends. I don’t know. And throughout all the years, nobody _ever_ knew that there was even an ‘us’. Then some unrelated stuff happened and I left. And so things are definitely over.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean repeated, rubbing the back of Tony’s hand in a soothing caress. His skin was so smooth and so soft, he couldn’t help but notice, which was different from his own calloused fingers.

Tony gave him a small smile. “Old news,” he sighed. “I was over him even before I left. Just… things took a turn for the really dark for a while. After I left, I mean. Went through a pretty bad patch. Then that ended. And now I’m here.”

“New life?” Dean guessed. “Fresh start?”

“As much as anyone can do that, I suppose,” Tony nodded.

Dean shrugged and cleared his throat. He couldn’t help but wonder about the dark times that Tony had gone through, wanted to know what could have been so dark that this capable, confident man wanted a new life. “My mom went away for most of my life,” he pursed his lips. What could he say? Mary Winchester died when he was four and then god’s – Chuck’s – sister Amara brought her back, and then his mother asked him to leave so she could have time with her baby, Sam? Yeah. Dean wasn’t going to have a repeat of being committed to a loony bin, thank you very much. Even if this time there wouldn’t be wraiths or demons or amnesiac angels involved. Been there, done that. “My dad did his best, and he really did love us, but he was kind of a lousy father. He was driven to achieve this one goal, so his priorities weren’t my brother or me. After he died, Sam and me lived and worked together for years. Then my mom comes back into our lives, only she tells me that she doesn’t want me around. She wants to get to know Sam, give him time because she never had a chance to spend real time with him. He’d been a baby when she first… went away.”

“So she kicked you out of your own home?” Tony’s eyes were wide.

“Could’ve stayed,” Dean shrugged. “It was my place. My life. My stuff. Not hers. But I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted.”

“Maybe she didn’t mean it how it sounded?”

Dean gave him a sad smile. “She’s had months to call me and explain if it was some kind of misunderstanding…”

Tony sighed. “Nothing?”

“We got jack,” Dean rolled his eyes. Because every day that his mother stayed silent was one day more that Dean had been rejected by his own mother. But, having grown up being John Winchester’s eldest son, Dean’s shoulders were broad enough to take on anything. John had left him enough times to fend for himself and Sam, even when they were little. Even back then, Dean Winchester hadn’t been a helpless little boy. Why wouldn’t he make it through this? “Sammy still calls. And sometimes we cross paths. I try to keep out of his way, though. Because of what Mom asked me.”

“Sammy’s your brother?”

“Sam,” Dean nodded, and he couldn’t help the proud smile that tugged at his lips when he thought about his moose of a brother. “He’s a good kid. Good man to have at your side. I know Mom won’t find a thing wrong with that kid.”

Melanie, the waitress, brought their coffee and pie out and Dean gave her a surprised look when she plunked the humongous slice of pie in front of him. “Pie before breakfast?”

Tony was already digging into his slice of pie, blueberries falling off his fork. “Why wait for the best part of the meal?” he mumbled, and that made a lot of sense to Dean.

The waitress laughed and told them that she’d be back with their breakfasts in a moment before she walked away. They dug into the pie and Dean found himself moaning in pleasure. The blueberries were fresh and perfectly sweet and juicy. Most of them were soft and almost liquefied, but a few of them would just pop in his mouth when he chewed. The ice cream was simple but delicious, thick, creamy, home-made vanilla ice cream, with specks of vanilla bean in it. It was perfect and a perfect accompaniment to the warm pie.

“I died and went to heaven,” Dean mumbled around a big mouthful of pie, moaning as the flavors burst in his mouth.

Tony just laughed, trying not to spray pie all over the table. His cheeks were full to bursting. Dean loved that despite how refined Tony seemed to be, he ate with the kind of vigor that Dean did, and he stuffed his mouth with bites almost as large as Dean’s. So he never had to pretend to be polite when he ate. He could just be himself without being made to feel like a heathen. It was really nice.

“Fuck heaven anyway. It’s overrated,” Dean continued decimating his own little slice of better than heavenly pie. “This pie is way better than heaven.” And take his word for it. He would know. He’d been to heaven before. Although, granted, hell was much worse. And of course, he’d been there, too.

Tony nodded, and they continued to eat. It didn’t take long for the both of them to clean their pie plates. Dean was just thinking about licking his plate when Tony swiped his index finger over the melted ice cream and remnants of pie on his plate and brought it to his mouth and immediately, Dean was torn between wanting to laugh at their synchronized thoughts to lick their plates, and imagining that it was his dick getting the treatment, as the older man sucked his index finger clean.

Tony’s mouth, shit. Those lips. His pink tongue peeking out of his luscious mouth. Dean’s dick was twitching in his pants.

Tony caught the look and his face flushed as he sheepishly wiped his fingers on a napkin.

“The pie was good, but _that_ was better,” Dean blurted out.

Tony shook his head and cleared his throat as Melanie cleared their dishes and set down their breakfasts. She was grinning at the two of them and giving Tony an approving nod. Dean felt an inordinate amount of pleasure at being green lit by a woman who’d just met him. She refilled their coffee cups and walked away again. There was silence at the table as both men ate. Dean was starving. He’d had a long night of battling angry ghosts and digging up and then re-burying graves. It was hard work and he fell upon his breakfast feast, adding his own moans of appreciation over the good food to Tony’s. When they were less hungry and better positioned to actually speak to each other, conversation flowed easily, and they talked about movies and books, and other random things. It never felt forced or stilted. Dean felt at home with Tony.

But he was still hungry and he ate with good appetite. When he finally swallowed his last bite and slurped down the nth refill of excellent coffee, Tony was smiling at him. Amused green eyes watched him as he wiped his mouth with his napkin, – yes, Sam, he does have manners – leaned back and patted his belly.

“What? I was hungry,” Dean growled. Then he yawned. It had taken him completely by surprise so he didn’t have time to even try to stifle it.

Tony only laughed. But then he turned serious. “To go back to our earlier topic of conversation…”

“Which one?”

“The one about family and why you’re out here alone because of your mom?”

“Ah yes. My mother…” Dean made a face.

Tony nodded.

Dean shrugged and gestured for him to carry on.

“So after this thing with your mom coming back, you had to leave your own home.”

Dean nodded.

“Did you get a new place?”

Dean sighed and shook his head. “Nah, Dad dragged us around the country a lot when we were kids. Nowhere ever felt like home and I don’t really want to go to all the trouble to make a new home just for myself. I just went back to that nomadic lifestyle of my childhood. It’s not like I’m not used to being on the road. Baby and me, we go way back.”

“But you’d found a place that you called home?” Tony prodded gently.

Dean nodded, sighing as he thought of the bunker. Bobby’s house had been like a home base to both he and Sam for a lot of their lifetime and he still missed that son of a bitch and his knowledge and his ‘idjits’ something fierce, but the Men of Letters bunker, it had been the first real place that felt like home to him since the Winchester residence burnt down in Lawrence all those years ago. The bunker had been more than just a place to sleep. It had given him a feeling of security, more than the motels, more than even Bobby’s safe room. But it was what it was. No use missing the bunker. Dean was a grown up and had been taking care of himself and Sammy since he was knee high to a grasshopper. He knew how to take care of himself.

But he did miss Bobby, who’d been more of a father to him at times than John had. If Bobby had still been alive, he’d probably have moved in with Bobby until he figured out some other living arrangement, but since Bobby was dead, Dean hadn’t wanted to find a new place to live. He’d gone right back to the John Winchester school of living – dragging himself around from motel to motel, case to case, living in Baby more than anything else. He’d left most of his things in the bunker, figuring that Sam would keep his stuff safe – his music, his clothes, his stupidly comfortable dead man’s robe. And maybe, one day he’d be able to go back home to the bunker, back to his room, and his memory foam mattress. He wondered if maybe his mattress would still remember him after all these months.

“Never really found a home other than this one,” Dean shrugged. “Dad’s been dead, god, years now, and Bobby, my uncle, he died a few years ago. He’d have taken me in, no questions asked. Well… questions asked, then he’d swear up a storm, call me an idjit, smack me in the back of the head, and probably call my mom and yell at her, too.”

“It’s good to have someone like that in your corner,” Tony sounded sympathetic.

“Bobby was something else, all right,” Dean smiled, remembering his surrogate dad. “He was more of a dad to us than our father was. Dad always left us with him if he didn’t want us around.”

“Not the best way to have a normal childhood, all that moving around,” Tony remarked.

Dean snorted derisively. Yeah. Normal? Childhood? They were all words that meant nothing to him. He’d been forced into being John Winchester’s soldier from the time that Mary died. He’d only ever been a child while his mother had been alive. After that, Dean had his hands full trying to raise Sammy, do his father’s bidding, and protect everyone as much as he could. He could hear Sam complaining to him when Dean went to get him at Stanford, a decade ago “ _When I told dad I was scared of the thing in my closet, he gave me a .45_ ”. Sam had been nine at the time. That was just the kind of _childhood_ that he and Sam had been subjected to.

“Well, normal childhoods are overrated,” Tony sighed.

Dean looked at him closely. There was a story there, he could tell. From that tone of voice, Tony hadn’t had the apple pie and white picket fence childhood either.

“Anyway,” Tony seemed to brush away the dark mood and turned bright eyes on Dean. “I was asking because I wanted to know if you were done with your work, or you’ll be busy again tonight?”

“I should be done now,” Dean nodded.

“And we already established that you don’t live here…”

“I don’t really live anywhere right now,” Dean grinned at him. “Mostly I freelance and go where I’m needed.”

“So it’s just a hotel or a motel?”

“Motel, yeah.”

“So instead of going back to your motel, I thought maybe you could just crash at my place today so maybe I can take you out to dinner and a real date tonight?” Tony’s eyes were bright with hope.

Dean mulled it over for a minute, his heart pounding. Everything in him screamed hell, yeah! Which made him wonder if it was a good idea. He was exhausted and he needed to sleep, and he did have a motel room waiting for him. But the bed in Tony’s guest room was incredibly comfortable, and certainly way better than the model bed. And it would be quiet and private, without other people making noise in the corridors or in the next room. And then a dinner date with this beautiful man after he was well rested? It sounded awesome.

“We could go watch the new Marvel movie that came out?” Dean suggested. He’d been wanting to see it.

“The second _Guardians of the Galaxy_?” Tony asked.

Dean nodded.

“Sounds good. I can’t get enough of that damn raccoon,” Tony grinned, before he started mouthing off and sounding exactly like Rocket. Dean’s heart stuttered even more. Fuck. Tony was just made of awesome. All Dean could do was laugh helplessly as Tony went on and on, complaining about the rain in his Rocket Raccoon voice. “The only bad thing about that movie is that we don’t get to see Bradley Cooper’s baby blues,” Tony finished with a sigh.

“He’s one good looking man,” Dean agreed. “But there’s always Chris Pratt?”

“True,” Tony nodded. “And there’s always Zoe Saldana. I can’t decide if she’s hotter green or hotter as Uhura,” Tony pursed his lips in contemplation.

“Oh, Uhura, hands down,” Dean couldn’t help the appreciative noise that he made at the thought of Uhura in the short skirt of her cadet reds.

“Trekkie?” Tony raised an eyebrow.

“Just don’t tell my brother,” Dean rolled his eyes. “He’d never let me live it down.”

“Let me guess, you let him believe you’re only into action movies?”

Dean made a face and nodded.

“Doesn’t he know about your thing about Doctor Sexy?” Tony wanted to know.

“He thinks it’s an anomaly.”

Tony laughed. “Well, here,” he slid a key across the table. “Make yourself comfortable. Get some sleep. You can help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge or pantry, watch a movie. Whatever.”

Dean squeezed Tony’s hand as he reached for the key. “Why are you doing this? I could clean out your house while you’re at work.”

“It’s just stuff,” Tony shrugged.

Dean gave him a sharp glance. Tony was deflecting, but yet he was kind of serious about not being attached to his stuff. “Seriously, though?” he had to ask.

Tony turned his hand and grasped Dean’s fingers, squeezing softly. “I don’t know why, but I trust you,” he said simply. “Now if you _were_ going rob me, I would advise calling specialists to move my piano or it’ll get damaged and the value will depreciate.”

Dean laughed. “Good to know.” He slipped the key into his pocket and smiled at Tony. “What time do you have to be at work? Do you have time for another slice of that awesome pie?”

Tony checked his watch and grinned. “I always have time for another slice of pie.”

So they flagged Melanie down and this time, instead of getting a slice of pie each, Melanie brought them a gigantic slice on one plate, handing them two forks and winking at Tony, who rolled his eyes, but didn’t object. They shared the pie and fought over the last bite, laughing easily at each other. Dean hadn’t had such a good time with anyone in well… ever. It seemed as if, other than the anonymous one night stands, all of his relationships tended to be serious and filled with angst. It was nice to just laugh with Tony about things that didn’t matter, and tease each other. It really was.

He froze for a second when he realized that he was thinking of this thing with Tony as a ‘relationship’. They hadn’t even had sex yet, just exchanged a few hot kisses. Hell, technically, this breakfast was their first date. Tonight would be their second. And Dean was already thinking in terms of relationships? Was he that starved for attention and affection that anyone would do?

But he watched Tony’s animated face as he told a story about a bike ride that he’d taken a few weeks ago on his day off, and the amazing view that he’d had of the ocean. And how he’d almost run over a squirrel because he’d been so taken in by the view. And all Dean could think was, he wanted to be there with Tony, to experience that moment with him, even if it meant he had to leave Baby behind and ride a damned bicycle to do it. So no. It wasn’t that Dean was that starved for attention and affection. Dean wanted to be with _this_ particular man. Not anyone else.

Shit. Things just got complicated, all of a sudden. This should have been a dinner and a movie, a good romp in the sack, and a sweet goodbye kiss. Tony didn’t seem like the kind of guy that would be unfamiliar with casual sex. But Dean felt like he was attached now. He couldn’t just fuck Tony and never see him again. Better yet, he _didn’t want_ to do that.

He should just slide the key back over to Tony, get in his car and drive out of Portland right now. It was the wisest thing he could do. But the key stayed on his side of the table.

“Everything OK?” Tony’s voice brought him out of his thoughts and he realized that he’d just zoned out to have his internal freak out while Tony had been speaking.

He rubbed his face and sighed, nodding tiredly. He really should leave now and not look back. That was what he should do.

“You need to go get some sleep,” Tony’s tone was firm now.

He nodded and reached across the table to take Tony’s hand, while his other hand slipped the key into his jacket pocket. Even if he should leave, he wasn’t going to. So there.

“I have to say I don’t miss the irregular hours and crazy sleep schedule I had at my old job,” Tony grinned. “Come on.”

Tony put down some bills on the table and waved Dean’s hand away when he tried to pay. “My treat,” he grinned.

“Well then, maybe it can be my treat tonight?” Dean asked.

Tony nodded happily. “Fine.”

OK. Dean was royally screwed because he knew he wasn’t going to walk away from this. He didn’t want to. He wanted to go and crash in Tony’s house and then go out for that date with him. And that was what he was going to do.

They walked through the diner to the exit, Dean’s hand on the small of Tony’s back and Tony waved to Melanie.

“Shit,” Dean sighed as he saw that it was stil pouring down rain. “Let me drive you to work.”

“It’s just a bit of rain,” Tony slipped his helmet on and strapped it under his chin and Dean saw that he wore what looked to be rain gear for cyclists. His jacket and his pants were lightweight but looked to be warm and waterproof. He could probably wade in a river and not get his feet wet in the shoes that he had on, and then he slipped some kind of fancy glasses that looked more like safety goggles on.

“I think I’ll probably get wetter in this weather than you will,” Dean told him.

“That’s the idea,” Tony grinned. “Besides, if I stopped biking because it’s raining then I wouldn’t bike very much. This is the Pacific North West. There’s quite a bit of rainfall here.”

Dean nodded his agreement.

“So I’ll see you after work?” Tony asked.

Dean patted his pocket where Tony’s key was and nodded. And then he pulled Tony in for what was supposed to be a quick kiss, but ended up with Tony plastered to him, mouths thoroughly explored, lips swollen and other parts of Dean’s body swelling as well. Tony finally pulled away, eyes still closed.

“To be continued,” he whispered to Dean.

Dean nodded and awkwardly cleared his throat when they heard applause and Melanie and a few of the people at the counter were openly staring and clapping. Tony’s cheeks, which were flushed from the kiss, turned a brighter red and he pulled his hood up.

“I get off work at six so I’ll be home not long after,” Tony told him.

Dean pulled him in for another kiss, this time keeping it soft and almost chaste, and smiled. “I can’t wait,” the promise in his voice unmistakable.

Tony gave him a long look, kissed him one more time, before he went to unlock his bike. Dean stood and watched him leave with a wave of his hand. Tony’s red pants and bright yellow jacket made him highly visible, even in the rain, and his bike had flashing red lights in the front and the back. Drivers should be able to see him. But even so, he couldn’t help but worry. After all, he’d already had to patch Tony up once after that drunk driver had run him over. Who knew what kind of damage stupid drivers could do to him in the rain. But he couldn’t do anything about it right now, though, so he turned his collar up and ran for Baby.

He ended up going back to the motel and packing all his stuff in Baby. He didn’t check out, in case he might need to come back to the place, but he figured, he could just leave Portland from Tony’s. Nothing was keeping him here in Portland. When he got to Tony’s house, he lined Tony’s windows with salt and began drawing wardings in chalk on the floor under rugs, especially those by the doors. He wished he could steam the wallpaper off so he could paint on some better wards and then stick the wallpaper back on to hide it from Tony. But for now, he’d done all he could.

He fell into bed and into a dreamless sleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow in the guest bedroom.


	6. Chapter 6

[](https://i.imgur.com/pUmxJDL.jpg)

He awoke from a deep sleep when his phone rang. He grabbed the offending item off of the nightstand and answered.

“What?” he growled, still mostly asleep.

“Dean! Are you alright?” it was his moose of a brother.

“I’m fine. What’s wrong?”

“You sound…”

“I was asleep, asshole,” he yawned, fighting to wake up. The bed was incredibly comfortable and he stretched his body like a cat, ignoring what Sam was saying, giving himself up to the simple enjoyment of an excellent mattress.

"Are you even listening to me, Dean?” Sam was asking.

Right. Sam was on the phone. Dean tuned back in. “I’m awake,” he sighed. “What’s going on?”

“Late night?” Sam asked.

“Had to dig up a grave and shit. Took all fucking night,” Dean yawned around the words.

“Alone?” Sam sounded concerned.

Dean just growled under his breath to stop this conversation from escalating. Because yes. Alone. That was how Dean rolled these days, through no fault of his own. So Sam could just suck it.

“Where are you? Mom and I think there’s a vampire at work here in Sioux City and it’s always good to have back up when dealing with vamps.”

“Can’t,” Dean said shortly. Sam had been trying to get him to come hunt with him and Mary lately, and not that Dean wanted to leave Sam high and dry, but he really didn’t feel comfortable hanging out with Sam while his mother looked on with disapproval. At least Sam had Mary with him. The Campbells had been a fierce hunting family and Mary was a hunter, through and through. Sam would be fine with her. “I’m on the west coast.”

“Where?”

He sighed and rubbed his eyes. Sam was such a nosy kid. “Oregon.”

“Oh,” his voice fell. “I guess we’d be done with it by the time you even got here.” Even without being able to see him, Dean could feel the sad, puppy dog eyes trained on him. Sam could always do this to him. All their lives.

“Yeah,” Dean agreed.

“Maybe I’ll find a case closer to the west coast and maybe you’ll come help out?” Sam sounded hopeful again.

“Maybe,” Dean muttered. He closed his eyes and yawned. “You good, Sammy?”

“I’m good, Dean,” Sam replied. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Dean sighed.

“Are you sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I hate that you’re hunting solo, Dean,” Sam was whining now. “I know you said that you had some _stuff_ to work out, but when are you coming home, dude?”

Oh boy. Here it came. The Sammy guilt trip. Dean could see his earnest expression, his girly hair falling into his face, trying so hard to just _understand_ what it was Dean was going through, so he could _help_. He’d always been such an earnest kid. Dean sighed, missing his brother so much in that moment. Not that he would ever admit to it.

“I’m still working on it, Sammy,” Dean kept his tone gentle. Sam truly didn’t know what the hell was going on and it made sense that he wouldn’t understand why Dean was staying away from the bunker and from him. But Dean couldn’t tell him that Mary had sent him away so she could get to know him. That would not end well for anyone. Dean had always been the one trying to keep Sam and John from tearing each other apart, and he was done being in the middle now. He didn’t want to subject himself to having to pick sides and never ever feeling like he was doing the right thing, and Mary wanted time alone with Sam. So that was that.

“It’s just… Dean… I _miss_ you, man. You’re my brother.”

“I know,” Dean murmured, trying not to sigh too loudly. If only Mary would just fucking tell Sam what was going on. So Sam could get with the program and stop making Dean feel bad about not being around him. This situation wasn’t Dean’s fault. He shouldn’t have to be hurt even more by Sam’s words after what Mary had said to him.

“It’s not because we just let you go off to face Amara by yourself, is it? You’re not mad at me about that, still?” Sam asked.

Dean blew out a breath. “I was never mad at you, and I’m still not mad at you, Sammy.”

“Then what’s going on?”

Dean growled, blowing out his breath in a long and loud sigh. “I’m just working on some stuff, like I said. I’m not mad at you. You know me. When have I ever not just fucking yelled at you if I’m mad at you?”

“Yeah, OK.”

“Call me if the thing in Sioux City gets out of hand. If it’s more than one vampire, I’m on my way, OK?” Dean told his brother.

“It’ll be fine. I talked to Cas last night and he said he saw you last week?”

“Yeah?” Where was Sam going with the Cas thing? He and Cas had hunted a wendigo in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State the previous week.

“How come Cas gets to see you more than Mom and I do?” Sam whined.

“Sammy,” Dean was as patient as he could be. “I’ll see you soon, OK?”

Sam grunted a reply and Dean just knew that he was already looking for cases in the Pacific North West just so he would be able to see him. Whatever. Dean couldn’t worry about that. He couldn’t just hide from Sam if he came looking for him. Mary would just have to understand and make an exception. But maybe, Mary would do him a solid and just stay at the bunker so Dean could just do this one hunt with Sam. Maybe he could call Cas and it would be like old times, the three of them, taking care of business, hunting things. It was so weird how much Cas had become family to them. Not too many people could boast an Angel of the Lord to be a member of their family. And god forbid he ever said out loud that the King of Hell was also someone he could count on in a pinch. Crowley would never let him live _that_ down.

Dean listened to Sam babble on about stuff, it pretty much went in one ear and out the other. Nothing jumped out at him. When Sam finally hung up, Dean yawned and stretched again. Fuck, this bed was amazing. It might even be better than his mattress in the bunker because it wasn’t just a memory foam mattress topper. It was a whole damned memory foam mattress. It was the best thing ever. But it was mid-afternoon and now Dean was wide awake.

He rolled out of bed, relieved his bladder and brushed his teeth. He padded around the house shirtless, with only his boxers on, checking to see that the salt lines were unbroken and his hastily scribbled wards were still intact. Then he raided the fridge and heated up a portion of the cannelloni dish that was left over from dinner a couple nights ago. The night that Dean had had to drive him home after he was run over by the drunk driver.

After he ate, he tidied up and washed the dishes he used. Then he ended up snooping around to see what Tony had in the house. He left Tony’s bedroom alone, not wanting to violate the man’s privacy too badly, but he went around looking at everything else, checking the drawers and whatnot. In the garage, he coughed as an entire dust cloud exploded into the air when he pulled the tarp up to see what kind of car Tony had but didn’t drive and gasped. It was the bones of what looked to be a 1966 Ford Mustang convertible. The body was mostly rusted and some indeterminate color. Dean looked under the hood and sighed at the mess that it was. The car was sitting on concrete blocks and Dean could see a couple of original hubcaps sitting forlornly in the car. The interior of the car needed a ton of work, too. He sighed. He could see himself fixing this car up for Tony. Tony would have some creative orgasm inducing ways to thank him in return. And god, he really wanted that.

Fuck. He needed to slow his roll, because he was suddenly already playing house with the man. He needed to remember what had happened with Lisa and Ben and how much danger he’d put them in just by being around them. No. Dean Winchester had to continue to be a lone wolf. But right now, he had time on his hands, and his toolbox handy. Maybe he could just fix a couple of things with the car, get the work on Tony’s car started. The tarp had been so dusty, Dean figured that Tony hadn’t had much time to work on it.

He was under the car with AC/DC blaring in his earbuds when a hand on his ankle made him kick out and he made contact with something solid. He yanked the earbuds out in time to hear that thing breathe out in a quiet ‘oof’.

“It’s me, Dean,” Tony squatted down and peered under the car.

Dean had a small flashlight in his mouth and several tools within easy reach. He pulled the flashlight out and glared at Tony. “That’s a good way to get your head kicked off, surprising me like that,” he muttered.

“I get that now,” Tony grinned at him, rubbing his shoulder.

“You OK?” Dean was concerned because even though he wasn’t wearing shoes, it was a known fact that Dean Winchester did not play around when he got rough.

“You might have to kiss and make it better,” Tony’s grin turned wicked now. “But before that, what the hell are you doing?”

Dean shoved himself out from under the car, wishing that there was one of those wheeled dollies so he could easily get himself in and out from under the car. “Fixing your car?” he started to feel guilty, since he hadn’t even asked Tony about it. One little thing had ended up becoming a chain of things that he thought he could get started on, and apparently now it was hours later and Tony had caught him under his car. “Sorry?”

“It’s fine,” Tony grinned, looking him up and down, and Dean flushed when he realized that he was still wearing boxers, although he’d put a t-shirt on that was now pretty grease stained. As was the rest of his body.

He cleared his throat and shrugged. “I should have talked to you first, but she’s so beautiful. I couldn’t stand just seeing her sit there all sad and lonely, and I can see what she should look like, you know?”

“Seriously, I bought the car on a whim. From a junkyard. Before they could crush her.”

“But… you haven’t had the time to work on her?”

“I’m not real handy with fixing cars,” Tony confessed. “And I’ve been meaning to call a mechanic to see if they can fix her up. But it hasn’t really been a big priority.”

Dean felt like there was more to this story. “Why did you buy this car?” he asked. “In particular. From a junkyard. If it wasn’t a project that you were trying to start on.”

“Used to have a car like this,” Tony ran his hand on the rusted out body, eyes far away, a fond smile tugging at his lips. “Green. Leather interior. Everything was original. I loved that car.”

“What happened?”

“I probably shouldn’t say anything in front of Baby,” Tony jerked his chin at Dean’s Impala. “Baby shouldn’t hear this story. I’m serious.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Maybe you can tell me at dinner.”

“Sure. Although I think you might need to maybe wash up a little.” Tony swiped at a grease spot on his arm.

Dean laughed. “I’ll go take a shower.” But before he could walk away, Tony pulled him in, wound his arms around him, and kissed him, slow and deep.

“Hey,” his voice was raspy with arousal.

“Hey,” Dean smiled.

“I’m really glad you’re still here.”

“You should know that the special piano movers will assist me in robbing you blind tomorrow,” Dean told him, and the bright bubble of laughter that came from Tony lifted his spirits more than he believed possible.

“Excellent. I look forward to it.”

“Let me shower before I get you any greasier,” Dean whispered as he claimed Tony’s lips again.

“I could always get in the shower with you, but then we’d miss the movie.”

“Promises, promises,” Dean laughed, stealing another kiss before he headed up to shower. He scrubbed grease off himself and cleaned up, and stood at the top of the stairs, clad only in a towel around his waist, after he was done. “Are we going someplace fancy?” he yelled down.

Tony appeared at the bottom of the stairs and just stared at him for a moment and Dean couldn’t help but preen at the open admiration and lust in Tony’s eyes. Dean knew that he looked good. Enough people had told him that all his life. But it was always nice to have that affirmation, not to mention, that it was Tony looking at him like that. It was a good feeling.

“Nothing fancy,” Tony had to clear his throat and blink a little before he finally responded. “Do you like Mexican food?”

“Who doesn’t like a good taco?” Dean threw up his hands.

“Good. So I was thinking we could go to this Mexican place I know after the movie? They’re open late… Unless you’re hungry and would prefer to eat first?”

“Dinner after’s good,” Dean shook his head to get the water out of his hair. “I’ll just be a second.” He ran into the bedroom and pulled on his cleanest pair of jeans, a black t-shirt that he knew stretched across his shoulders and accentuated his pecs, one of his nicest plaid shirts and his leather jacket. He pulled his boots on and ran down the stairs to find Tony waiting for him in the living room. Tony had on tight black jeans, boots, a gray t-shirt with The Police on it, a jacket and a big smile.

“You look good,” Dean said after admiring him for a moment.

Tony rolled his eyes and smirked at him, but Dean could tell that he was pleased.

“I assume I’m driving?” Dean jangled his keys.

“Unless you got further along with restoring my hunk of junk than I thought possible in one afternoon, the answer to that is ‘yes’,” Tony snarked.

Dean laughed, and when Tony held out his hand, without a thought, he took it and they walked into the garage, hand in hand. The movie was excellent, and he and Tony were just gabbing away about it and other Marvel movies at lunch at the little dive of a Mexican restaurant that Tony directed him to afterwards. Dean was enjoying himself so much, it was a surprise to him when he realized that it was past midnight. Regretfully, they left the restaurant, and Dean slipped his hand into Tony’s without hesitation, seeking out his touch. They’d been flirting all night, exchanging a few kisses, playing footsie a little under the table. It was all so normal and so fun.

They were necking like teenagers in Baby when they got back to Tony’s house. Dean had pushed the bench seat back as far as it would go and Tony was on top of him, straddling him. Dean was massaging Tony’s ass, having slipped his hands under his clothes, grabbing his ass and Tony was grinding his hard on down on Dean’s, moaning when Dean began sucking on his neck.

“Come upstairs,” Tony moaned, hips jerking as they rutted against each other.

“Yeah, OK,” Dean agreed and they almost fell out of the car since neither of them seemed to be willing to let go of the other. Finally Tony tumbled off of Dean’s lap and out of the car and Dean laughingly caught him before he hit the floor, and they finally made it out of the car, out of the garage and into the house. Tony was yanking Dean’s jacket off and dropping it onto the floor as soon as they got the door to the garage closed. They were stripping each other of their clothes as they kissed and groped each other on the way up the stairs, leaving articles of clothing strewn about as they slowly made their way up the stairs and into Tony’s bedroom. Tony pushed him onto his bed – a huge, king-sized sleigh bed that _also_ had a memory foam mattress, hallelujah! – and god, Dean’s hard dick throbbed at that. Tony was no weakling and could manhandle Dean. He didn’t even know that that was a kink of his but apparently it was. By this time, they were clad only in their underwear and he admired the bulge that was in Tony’s boxer briefs.

Tony laid on top of him and they kissed, deep, sloppy, fierce kisses that was surprisingly full of teeth and Tony dropped biting kisses down the line of Dean’s jaw, making him moan and arch his neck, giving Tony more to work with.

“Your freckles are driving me crazy,” Tony murmured into his skin as he sucked on that spot right below Dean’s ear that made him moan. Dean’s dick was blurting copious amounts of pre-cum and was so hard that he wouldn’t be surprised if he came even before Tony could touch him. He hadn’t really been in the mood for sex lately, too depressed about the whole situation with Mary and Sam, so he hadn’t really had an orgasm in a while. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to taste them all,” Tony continued. “But I’m sure going to try.”

Dean made some kind of unintelligible noise when Tony began kissing down his body. He stopped at random places, presumably tasting Dean’s freckles.

“This is hot,” Tony began licking his anti-possession tattoo. “What’s it for?”

“Protection,” Dean moaned.

“Against?”

“Demonic possession,” Dean couldn’t control his mouth as Tony’s fingers pinched his nipples and he sucked and licked at Dean’s’ tattoo.

Tony stopped and raised his head, looking into Dean’s eyes. “What?”

Dean wanted to bite his tongue and take back his words. “What?” he parroted weakly. His dick was still harder than ever.

“Are you for real?” Tony asked.

Dean made a face. “My family has some superstitious beliefs?” he tried.

“Huh,” Tony said thoughtfully, his fingers still plucking at Dean’s nipples, making him shudder and moan. “Does it work?”

“Can’t hurt, right?” Dean tried not to keep grinding himself up into Tony’s body. He didn’t want to talk about his tattoo now that he had accidentally told Tony the truth about what it meant.

“I suppose not,” Tony hummed before he dived back, continuing to trail kisses down Dean’s body, heading straight for his dick.

“ _Shit_ ,” Dean couldn’t help but fuck into Tony’s hand when he slipped his hand into Dean’s boxers and began fisting him. “Wait,” he pulled Tony’s hand away, even though he couldn’t stop himself from moaning in protest. He wasn’t going to last and he didn’t want to finish alone like an asshole. “My turn.” He rolled them over and straddled Tony’s body, taking in the hard planes, the muscled torso and arms. Tony wasn’t built like a gym rat, but he obviously kept himself in shape.

“How do you want to do this?” Tony panted at him, as he began exploring Tony’s tanned expanse of skin with his hands and his mouth.

“What?” Dean had to pull himself away from sucking on Tony’s nipple.

“How do you want me tonight?” Tony asked again. He had pushed Dean’s boxers down and was grabbing and kneading his bare ass.

“However you want it, babe,” Dean smiled. “I’m flexible.”

“Maybe you can fuck me first?” Tony asked.

“Love to,” Dean leaned up and claimed Tony’s mouth, kissing him hungrily. “Then maybe you can fuck me for round two?”

“Yeah,” Tony panted into his mouth, hips stuttering when Dean took his cock in his hand and began jerking him off. “Yeah. Oh fuck. Definitely. Sounds goooo-o-oood,” he moaned long and loud. “Drawer,” he pointed vaguely in the direction of his night stand.

Dean kissed him and jacked him off some more, loving the feel of the velvety skin of Tony’s cock as it dribbled pre-cum on his hand before he reached over, opened the drawer and pulled out lube and an unopened box of condoms. He stared at Tony. It was a box of condoms that had been dumped in the drawer without ever being opened, and not one Tony had just recently bought.

“Seriously?” he gaped at the man. Tony was so fucking sexy, there was no way he should have had a box of condoms just lying around in his house unopened and unused. Someone like Tony would have absolutely no trouble finding someone to fuck.

“Haven’t really wanted anyone in a while,” Tony shrugged.

Dean could feel the smile bloom on his face, slow and sensual. Well, well, well. They were both in the same boat of not really having sex with anyone for some time. He wouldn’t feel so bad if he came too quickly this first time because since they were already discussing a second round, he could make it better after that. Or the time after that. Dean wasn’t going to want to stop at two rounds, he already knew that much.

He opened the box and drew out a string of condoms, throwing the box aside for the moment. He put the lube and condoms within easy reach before he covered Tony’s body with his own and began kissing his lips, a long, slow, deep kiss, full of tongue and teeth, slowing them down a little.

“How about a slight deviation to the plan?” he suggested as he pulled away, making sure Tony’s green eyes were on his.

“Deviation?” Tony asked, the green of his eyes were almost gone, his pupils were blown so wide.

“Yeah. I haven’t really wanted sex for a while either,” he admitted. “So I’m kind of surprised that I didn’t immediately blow my load when you touched my dick.”

Tony smiled. “Me, too,” he muttered.

“So let’s get this first orgasm out of the way and then we can start over and really make it good?” Dean suggested, his voice going deep and throaty. “I’ll fuck you then. And afterwards you fuck me.”

“Yeah, OK,” Tony nodded. “I’m on board. Deviation, check.”

Dean laughed and kissed Tony again. He kissed the wet spot on Tony’s boxer briefs, causing the older man to arch his back, and smiled as he pulled Tony underwear off and threw them aside, admiring Tony’s hard cock. He kicked his own boxers off and dove back to claim Tony’s lips. Tony opened his legs and cradled Dean in between them and the first time their cocks slid against each other, skin on skin, they both moaned. Dean began rutting against him, trying to hold off his orgasm, even though every slide of Tony’s head against his made him want to come. He pushed off Tony with a grunt and reached for the lube, squirting some on his hand. He leaned down and sucked on Tony’s cockhead which made the man thrust his dick further into Dean’s mouth with a strangled cry. Dean pulled away, sucking hard as he did so, and Tony whimpered, hand going down to grasp the base of his cock.

“Close?” Dean whispered.

“You have no idea,” Tony snarled. “Let’s do this.”

Dean laughed again and took hold of his own dick with his lubricated hand. He moaned as he jerked himself off and spread the lube up and down his shaft. Then he angled his body and rubbed their dicks together. He wrapped his fingers around both their cocks and began jerking them off together.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Tony hissed, fingers digging into Dean’s biceps. “Fuck. _Yeah_.”

“Yeah, babe,” Dean muttered, hips stuttering as Tony began thrusting up into him. Every time Tony’s head slammed into his, he swore and tightened his grip a little. He could feel his orgasm coming upon him.

“Gonna _come_ ,” Tony warned him, teeth gritted. “Dean. Dean. Dean. _Yeah_. Like that,” he panted when Dean began twisting his hand a little. Dean watched as the veins bulged in Tony’s neck and his fingers dug into his arm. He was sure he was going to bruise with how hard Tony was holding on to him and that only pushed him closer to orgasm.

Dean hung on, holding back his own release, jerking them both off, until Tony threw his head back, gritting out a hoarse cry as he came, shooting a long stream of come up onto both their torsos. Dean stroked him through his orgasm, wanting to watch the beautiful man come undone under him. But when Tony pulled him down, kissing him and biting his bottom lip, he couldn’t help it as the orgasm snuck up on him and he began coming, his own spurts of jizz adding to the mess on Tony’s belly. Tony’s hand took over, milking him, and he just kept coming until he was spent and collapsed half on top of the older man.

Dean’s breathing was finally slowing down and his heart wasn’t about to pound right out of his chest. He was sprawled face down, mostly on top of Tony and he could feel Tony’s fingers gently caressing his back.

“Sorry,” he muttered, scooching over so he wasn’t crushing Tony, although he left his leg draped on top of Tony’s and slung his arm around Tony’s neck.

“Mmm,” Tony hummed, a sigh of pure satisfaction that made Dean preen inwardly. He’d done that. Made Tony into what looked to be a happy puddle of goo.

Dean turned his head and pulled himself closer to the other man, opening his mouth and kissing Tony’s neck. Tony moaned softly, angling his head, and wordlessly begging Dean for more. The sounds he made and the trusting act of Tony baring his neck made Dean’s cock twitch, even though he had just had a _very_ satisfying orgasm. Sometimes, Dean really missed his teenaged refractory period because he would have been all up into Tony and fucking him already.

Tony’s soft giggle surprised him.

“Hold on there, Tiger,” Tony smiled at him, kissing him softly. “There’s no rush. I’m not going anywhere. You can fuck me whenever you’re ready.”

“Did I just say that bit out loud?” Dean mentally facepalmed, but Tony’s throaty chuckle only made his cock throb.

“I have a few years on you, Dean, so I’m no teenager. I can wait for the next round,” Tony turned on his side to face Dean. They kissed for a while, soft, wet kisses, and Dean nuzzled into Tony’s neck, tasting his skin there, hands moving up and down their backs and arms, legs twining together. It was unhurried, yet sexy and full of promise. They eventually got out of bed and wiped each other down in the bathroom, and brushed their teeth and got ready for bed. But when Tony tugged Dean back into bed with him, things escalated quickly from cuddling – seriously, don’t ever tell Sam that Dean enjoyed cuddling in bed with someone – to lube and fingers knuckle deep in Tony’s ass, and then a condom and Dean was sheathing himself in Tony’s warm, welcoming body. The urgency from before was missing, but what remained was an intensity. Tony’s moans stirred Dean even more as he thrust into his body.

He rolled them over and Tony was on top of him, his cock going even deeper into Tony’s body. Tony started moving up and down, shifting himself until the angle was just right and Dean could see Tony’s mouth fall open as he fucked his hips upwards directly onto the other man’s prostate. Dean kept his eyes open, not wanting to miss it as Tony’s movements sped up and became less coordinated, and his dick kept drooling pre-cum onto his belly, tagging it with that hot stickiness. He licked his palm and wrapped his hand around Tony’s dick, causing the man to swear and clutch at his chest.

“Come on, babe,” Dean encouraged him, wanting to see him go over the edge again. “Yeah. Just like that, babe.” He planted his feet and kept thrusting upwards in time, and Tony was fucking down onto him and fucking forward into his hand. And the sounds that he was making. God. Dean couldn’t even focus on his own pleasure because Tony was making those noises.

Finally, Tony stiffened, head jerking down and he caught Dean’s gaze and his fingers tightened on Dean’s arms. Dean thrusted upwards hard and Tony’s mouth fell open, but they kept their eyes on each other. He slid up and down a few more times before a guttural cry was torn from his throat and he came, thick creamy spurts onto Dean’s belly. He tightened hard on Dean’s cock which triggered Dean’s release and he fucked up as deep as he could go, crying out as his orgasm slammed into him.

It took a few minutes before their ragged breathing slowed down. Dean’s dick softened and slipped out of Tony’s body and neither of them had the energy to do anything about it. Finally, Dean kissed Tony’s sweaty hair, removed and tied off the condom, throwing it into the bin without really looking, carelessly swiped at the come on his belly with the corner of the sheet, and maneuvered Tony’s pliant body so he could be the big spoon. He pulled the covers up, kissed Tony’s neck, wrapped his arm around Tony’s belly, and sighed when Tony scooched even closer to him even though the man was mostly asleep. Dean was only able to nuzzle soft kisses to the back of Tony’s neck before sleep overtook him.

When Tony’s alarm woke them both up, Dean was on his back and Tony snuggled mostly on top of him. Dean’s arm was around the other man, holding him close. He made a noise of complaint at the alarm.

“I have to work today,” Tony sighed.

“It’s the ass crack of dawn,” Dean complained, hands wandering down to Tony’s bare ass. They were both still naked from their activities of the previous night.

“I usually get up early and go for a long run.”

“Are you a health nut?” Dean gave him an accusatory stare.

“Just you wait till you’re in your forties, Dean. You gotta work at it to keep in shape.”

“Well, you could use a different workout this morning, maybe?” Dean gave him a sly wink.

Tony’s smile lit up his face. “I do seem to recall you saying something about wanting to be fucked?”

“Good memory,” Dean smiled back, grabbing Tony’s ass cheeks and grinding his morning wood up into him while Tony claimed his lips.

Tony was almost late for work because he took his time taking Dean apart and fucking him almost insensible. Dean was begging for his release for a long time before Tony allowed it to happen. In the end, Dean had to get up and get a quick shower with Tony and drive him to work because it was too late for Tony to bike there.

“Half day only today,” Tony told him when they arrived at the bookstore.

“Good, so I’ll come pick you up and we can go get some lunch?” Dean suggested.

“Sounds good,” Tony smiled and the kiss they exchanged was slow and deep and long and wet and perfect.

Dean ended up staying with Tony for almost a week before he finally dragged himself away from Portland to investigate a case in Denver that Sam and Castiel had found. He’d started ordering parts for Tony’s Mustang and worked on it while Tony was at work. He also quietly started strengthening his wards around the house, and fixed a bunch of things around the house. They watched movies, listened to music, hung out, and they started cooking for each other. Mostly, Dean would drive Tony to work and pick him up afterwards. And they had so much sex because Dean couldn’t get enough of Tony and it seemed to be the same for Tony.

When Dean had to leave, Tony kissed him goodbye and asked no questions, not even when or if Dean would return. They hadn’t made any promises, hadn’t talked about feelings or anything else.

“I’ll call you later,” Dean promised, stealing yet another kiss.

Tony smiled, a little sadly at him, and nodded.

“This thing in Denver might take a week, but after that I’ll come back.”

“Yeah?”

Dean nodded. He wanted to. He really liked Tony. Hell, he more than liked Tony. Tony felt right to him and he was tired of giving up on the things that he wanted. He wanted this thing with Tony to work. Wanted a lot of more him and not just have to take the scraps of what life threw at him. Tony hadn’t asked him any uncomfortable questions about work, hadn’t mentioned the lines of salt that Dean kept checking on. And if Tony had found some of the warding that Dean had made around the house, he said nothing to Dean about it.

“Safe trip,” Tony told him, and then Dean was all alone on the road again.

While it was good to work with Sam and Castiel again, he missed Tony terribly. He called the man every day he was gone. When the case was over and Sam tried to get him to come back to the bunker, he made his excuses and hightailed it back to Portland.

Tony’s smile and the kiss he received for coming back and for the tiny charm in the shape of the anti-possession symbol attached to a braided leather rope that he tied securely around Tony’s wrist was everything he could ever ask for.

Things were looking up for Dean Winchester. Finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it... for now!
> 
> This was a story I had been working on, off and on, for a couple of years, and finally decided to dust off and get to a conclusion. There's still more yet to come, and I have part of the sequel written to explore some of the unanswered questions, but I think this story can stand on its own, covering how Tony and Dean meet, and how they start a relationship. This takes place after Tony leaves NCIS and after Amara brings Mary Winchester back to life (spoilers, sorry!). Assume canon as is up until this point. Right now, we don't know why in the early spring of the following year Tony now lives in Portland, or what happened to Tali, but we do know that Dean is back on the road alone because Mary had asked him for time alone with Sam to get to know him, since she never got a chance to get to know Sam from before, because he'd only been six months old when she died.
> 
> I wrote a bunch of what ended up being the sequel already but I still need to connect the dots and close out some plot points. But hopefully one day the muse will get there.
> 
> In the meantime, I wrote this while listening to a whole pile of music, to be honest. But I did kind of focus on [The House of the Rising Sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKdN5aSC4HE) by the Animals for a lot of the edits and clean ups. The title of the story comes from the lyrics of the song:  
>  _There is a house in New Orleans_  
>  _They call the Rising Sun_  
>  _And its been the ruins of **many a poor boy**_  
>  _And god I know I'm one_
> 
> A huge thank you goes out to my artist, [SpencnerTibbsLuvr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KliqzAngel/pseuds/SpencnerTibbsLuvr)! Thank you so much for choosing my story, and thank you for the fabulous artwork that you made for it! 😄
> 
> This is my first time participating in the [Every Fandom Bang](https://everyfandombangs.wordpress.com/) and you can read the rest of the stories from this bang in the [Every Fandom Bang 2019 Collection](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/2019_Every_Fandom_Bang).
> 
> Also, I have to thank my lovely friend [Red_Pink_Dots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots) who has read about half of this story, and bits and pieces of the sequel, and has been cheering me on to get it done. Thank you for all your support of me, as always, ma chere amie! I hope you like the rest of this part of the story. I love you ❤️❤️❤️
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed the story! Thanks, and until next time! 😄
> 
> ❤️  
> -j  
> xoxo


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